I often bolt out of bed thinking of things that seem quite sensible at 4am but perhaps not so much at 3:45 in the afternoon. I’m not sure about this idea, but I’m going to give it a go. It’s basically a structure – a lens through which one can look everything new. That’s getting to the ” – ness” of it but what does it mean for learners? Could teachers use this with students? Could leaders use this with their teams? WOW This is, of course, what strikes you. It’s about noticing

“I’d like to use my lifeline…” I’ve really not watched Who Wants to Be A Millionaire more than a few times, but my pop culture literacy is pretty high, and I am quite familiar with the concept of “lifelines”. Apparently the show has dropped “Phone a Friend“, “Three Wise Men” and “Ask the Expert” and now only allow jumping the question and asking the audience. Listening to Julian Stodd’s podcast this morning on how learning is changing and the learning spaces needed in organiz

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of chatting with David Lizerbram, a business lawyer, in his “Products of the Mind” series, “a podcast about the intersection of business + creativity.” We spoke mostly about my views and experience with the nature of creativity, a bit about teaching and my work with EdgeMakers, remix and fair use, and tips for fostering personal creativity. Take a listen: http://lizerbramlaw.com/podcast/burvall/ I asked my lovely friend Bryan Mathers to do

This weekend I had the supreme privilege of doing a #53takeover of the Instagram account of my favourite app – Paper, by Fifty-Three (@fiftythree). The folks at Fifty-Three have been nothing but lovely in all respects and the app has veritably changed my life and how I work – both professionally and creatively – so needless to say I was tickled. I approached the takeover from a teaching perspective – to me it wasn’t about showcasing my art but rather a few thematic “lessons”,

Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) has started a blog series called #LearningIs (referenced in my last post) and in doing so has challenged all of us to think about how we define learning. Learning Like a Machine My thoughts drifted first to other, non human things that “learn”. I considered the artificial intelligence “stars” of pop culture- Apple’s Siri, 2001 A Space Odyssey’s HAL, Bladerunner’s Rachael and Samantha from Spike Jonze’s poignant film Her. I’ve long been fascinated

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of learning and teaching (in the form of presentations and workshops) on the subject of Creativity. How does it work? What can we learn from the creative processes of others? Why do we need to cultivate it in ourselves and students? What role will it play in the new economy – in the very future for which we are preparing our children? And finally – this is the crux- how does one do it? My approach to creativity is that it is essentially about dot-

In late January 2016 I was pleased to do a one hour webinar on the topic of “fostering daily critical creativity in the K-12 classroom” for Learning Bird. Linked below is the 3-part blog series I created as a webinar wrap-up. There’s some theory about how creativity works, but loads of practical tips and strategies. By the way – these can be incorporated into your life outside the classroom, and of course may even be applicable to adults. Part I: The Way Back to Wonder Part I

typographic art by Sean Ziebarth (@MrZiebarth) I few blog posts back I took inventory of my various “series” on the Web – and even challenged others to think in “series” when they create. It’s been a few months and it seems I have thought of a few more, so here is the full annotated list. Most of the titles are hyperlinked to the Pinterest board where I’ve tried to organize and collect, but I have undoubtedly missed a few. You can also search my Instagram  (all are posted the

I hope this works out, but two of my favourite creative compadres, Dan Ryder (@WickedDecent) and Sean Ziebarth (@MrZiebarth ) and I have gone in kahoots to propose an SXSWEdu workshop. Both gentlemen presented this past SXSWEdu and I gave an Ignite talk with EdTechWomen at SXSWEdu14. We wanted to do something that pooled our combined talents and love (ok obsession) for remix and creativity. Dan was brilliant enough to come up with the concept of “Critical Creativity”, and I t

I talk about remix a lot – probably more than most people. I even have a pretty meaty G+ community that houses all kinds of examples. I also sketch a lot- in fact, this past year, I’ve averaged about 10 sketches a day for my various projects: Serendipidoodle, #100daysofhashtaggerie, Drawmour, #threethirtysketchquote, and My day in One Word – not to mention the ones I do for keynotes (about 350 per one hour keynote). I upload most of these to my My-conography Tumblr. Sketching

If you had control of the district ed-tech budget what would you do? Recently, I keynoted In Texas at Region One’s “Using Technology to Make a Difference Conference”. My keynote centered around “New Literacies” and how technology can be integrated seamlessly to cultivate those (see all 400+ hand-drawn pink slides here). We then broke up for a workshop later on Remix and Re-Contextualization for the Classroom (If you are interested, I’ll be doing a Master Class at Alan Novembe

The other day I decided to remix (no big shocker there, considering my track record), the brainchild of Dr. Ruben Puentedura – Harvard Technology Fellow and founder of Hippasus, an education consulting firm aimed at transformative applications of technology in learning. The thing I’ve always wanted to switch up, despite the fact that it completely makes sense and I admire his utter brilliance is the model of tech integration known as S.A.M.R. First off, I must admit  have a p

I’m really excited to be joining Mitch Resnick and the crew from MIT Media Lab for the “Learning Creative Learning” MOOC (#lcltalk). I had the pleasure of visiting the Lab a few years ago as part of Alan November’s Building Learning Communities conference. We dabbled in remix culture and I explored collaborative storytelling with the Scratch program. Our first assignment was to read Seymour Papert’s Gears of My Childhood and write a short description about an object from our

In a previous post, I mentioned that I’ve been working with Mozilla as one of their first “Webmaker Fellows”, testing out remix tools they’ve created to allow users to move from consumer to creator. Although I could have dallied with Thimble or Goggles, I decided to specialize in Popcornmaker, particularly because I have found it very useful in my high school courses. The two projects I developed were slightly inspired by Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – a cheeky series I watch

In early September, I was thrilled to get an email request from Mozilla to be a part of their first ever “Webmaker Fellows” program. Apparently, they were pleased with my Introduction video for the #teachtheweb MOOC using the Popcornmaker tool. I had previously used (and loved!) Popcornmaker for my final project for the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC with Coursera in this cheesy ’80’s music video parody/commentary on our present relationship with digital devices: “Digit

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

Week 1 Assignment for #teachtheweb MOOC: Reflect on Making as Learning. I decided to piece together some of my slides from a presentation I did about Creativity and Making for students in Vancouver, Canada (Van Tech and Crofton House), as well as some additional clips and quotes. I really had planned on providing a voiceover but the music was so groovy (thanks, Jamendo.com !) that I decided to leave as is and annotate it here in this post. BREAK (out of the box), SHAKE (it up

I decided to create a collage of a Little Red Riding Hood themed photo shoot I did with my daughter. All photos were edited in picmonkey.com I wanted the series of images to hint at the story, and at the end throw in a twist (she’s wearing the wolf as a coat- a reference to the Roald Dahl poem) A few weeks later, in the wood, I came across Miss Riding Hood. But what a change! No cloak of red, No silly hood upon her head. She said, “Hello, and do please note My lovely fur