Questioning Assumptions: Podcast episode

by | Thursday, November 30, 2023

I was recently invited as a guest on the Better Learning Podcast. I had a great conversation with the host, Kevin Stoller (and boy does he have a voice designed for audio!). Turns out that we both went to Miami University, though our paths didn’t overlap or intersect.

Kevin Stoller, is CEO of Kay-Twelve and author of Creating Better Learning Environments and the goal of his podcast is to find “ways we can improve education for our kids. It’s about breaking down the silos of education, learning from others, and actively driving change!” Words that resonated with me.

We had this conversation a few weeks ago, and I, quite honestly, had forgotten most of the specifics of what we had talked about, so driving into to work this morning, I give it a quick listen (at 1.2x speed). And boy, did we cover a lot in a ~30 min conversation: from school design to creativity, from questioning assumptions to the Next Education Workforce; from generative AI to Die Hard (the movie); and so much more. It was a fun and substantive conversation which you can listen to below or on your favorite podcasting app. Enjoy,

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Teaching an old dog new tricks

Teaching an old dog new tricks

I have been playing with Photoshop Beta, a version of Photoshop with a range of AI-powered tools that let you add, extend, or remove content from your images using simple text prompts. This is similar to Adobe Firefly, a web-based image manipulation / generation tool,...

Finding myself in EduPunk

Matt Koehler introduce me to the idea of edupunk. As this Chronicle story (Frustrated With Corporate Course-Management Systems, Some Professors Go 'Edupunk') says, Edupunk seems to be a reaction against the rise of course-managements systems, which offer cookie-cutter...

Jere Brophy, 1940 – 2009

There is a nice article in the State News about Jere Brophy including quotes from his daughter Cheri Spier, my department chair Dick Prawat, and my former advisee (now faculty member at Drexel) Aroutis Foster. Read MSU professor dies, honored by colleagues as field...

Technology in schools: Detroit Free Press & Edutopia

For the record, I was quoted in today's Detroit Free Press in an article titled: School districts expanding technology, but training is key to success. In addition, two of my partners in crime (Matt Koehler & Candace Marcotte) were mentioned in an Edutopia article...

Off to Netherlands

I will be out of the country for most of next week. I will have access to email (except when I am in-flight/traveling) though I may not be able to reply as to emails as promptly as I would like. For those who care I will be in Twente University, in the Netherlands,...

Friday the 13th

A design for Friday the 13th (shamelessly building on an original idea from Nikita Prokhorov)  Enjoy.

Deep-Play: Creativity in Math & Art through Visual Wordplay

I have been creating ambigrams for years now... and I feel extremely lucky that what started as a personal interest and passion has led to some wonderful experiences and learning. These include a series of articles on the mathematics behind these visual designs and...

Media, Cognition & Society through History:  A Mapping

Media, Cognition & Society through History: A Mapping

If oral cultures prioritize memory and print cultures emphasize systematic organization, what types of knowledge will AI systems foster? Marie Heath and I wrote this line in a chapter that is currently in press. But the idea underlying this quote has been with me for...

Of hernias and hiccups, the evolutionary story

Interesting article in Scientific American about how flaws in our biology reveal our evolutionary history. Steven Gould talked about it in his famous essay on The Panda's Thumb. This is a wonderful argument for Darwinian evolution since it points not to perfection...

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