“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night”  – David Ogilvy I’ve been thinking a lot about learning lately, and how best to make what we choose to teach in schools poignant: meaningful, relevant, and memorable. Reflecting on the quote above, I think educators can learn a lot from the marketing sector. from Disney’s 1959 “Sleeping Beauty” – the e

Forgive me, but I was a bit tricksy in the title of this post. I’ve been thinking about this for years, probably, but as I see society seemingly crumbling before us in recent months it’s become more of a nagging preoccupation. I’m a big fan of simplification…abstraction…distillation – of getting to the “ness” of something. What if our curriculum  – any curriculum in any school – was based on just two domains…lenses through which one can peer and prod at everything? PHILOSOPHY

This morning I woke to a post on my Twitter feed sharing an article from Prospect Magazine – “How the Human Got His Paintbrush”. It’s basically a well composed critique by Philip Ball of scientist E.O. Wilson’s new book, The Origins of Creativity. The topic is something I’m obviously quite interested in, and I’m a sucker for genetics (I blame the mesmerizing Mendel’s Peas film we watched in 8th grade Biology). I encourage everyone to at least skim this review, for it brings u

It’s been a few days since returning from my third (and probably most inspiring) year at November Learning’s Building Learning Communities Conference (aka BLC13) at the exquisite Boston Park Plaza Hotel, which- as @Braddo pointed out upon arrival, has graciously included a portrait of me. All joking aside, I was thrilled to have attended, albeit alone (but, with Twitter, is one ever really alone?). For me, BLC is the ultimate conference…not only is it pedagogy (versus technol