THOUGHTS
32 posts
Are your best intentions sabotaging your presentation? 😬 You’ve got such great information for your audience. You spent all week putting together your masterpiece of a deck. So why does it feel like you’re losing them? And [gasp] was that a YAWN? 😱 Here’s the thing: sometimes when we try to help our audience learn, …
AI and learning? Everything has changed. And nothing has. The “everything” is obvious: AI tutors, automated assessments, rampant cheating, legit fear of replacement, and the potential of truly individualized learning. The learning landscape is facing enormous disruption. And yet: A few of the constants:👉 Intentionality: Great learning requires meaningful goals and meaningful assessment built from …
Learning isn’t learning if it doesn’t create change. It’s a core belief that’s driven more than two decades of my work. And it’s why I’m so honored to be included in The Upside‘s 2025 Impact Index alongside some other truly impactful experts. Because impactful learning isn’t magic. It’s engineered. Because it’s eminently achievable when it’s …
Forgetting is a path to remembering. 🧠💪 Last week I posted about my recent CPLEE project: building a tech-infused, learning science-informed approach to passing a licensing exam. Today let’s talk about some of the learning science I used and how it can help you! We’ve all learned something and then immediately forgotten it. The name …
Critical thinking with AI?Don’t trust. VERIFY! (👆 there’s your AI mantra for the week) I just came up for air after a lengthy project helping someone study for the California Psychology Laws and Ethics Exam (CPLEE), the licensing exam for psychologists who practice in CA. They’d already tried one of the 3rd party exam prep …
Sometimes it’s not this or that. Sometimes it’s both.That’s why I’m pivoting my consulting business in the new year. Thanks to The Upside‘s This or That campaign, I got to thinking about some things I’ve learned (or re-learned) about myself this year:🤏 Less is more (except for the clutter on my desk, that’s just more)🤯 …
Disruptive innovation? or copyright violation? I’ve become an armchair expert on copyright over the years – partly from sheer 🤓, and partly because my edtech work required me to teach faculty and students how to stay on the ethical side of copyright in a world where copying was so easy (and the fines so astronomical). …
“All change is harm.” 🧐🤯 My friend Caitlin Harper shared so many valuable insights on managing change in today’s Ways We Learn Podcast, but that one in particular keeps rolling around in my head. As in: even something seemingly good, like her example of free money, changes the status quo in (definitely) unpredictable and (possibly) …
Question for you: what’s the most important factor in learning? 🧐 I’ve got a new Ways We Learn Podcast episode dropping tomorrow, and a bonus episode in a week, featuring Amin Shaykho of Kadama. Kadama is a tutoring app for the gig economy. It’s an awesome conversation about how Amin built the company and how …
Mine is inquiry. We prize decisiveness, creativity, empathy, and plenty of others. And they’re all important! But I think approaching situations with questions has served me best. In the classroom, it looks like asking how a student got to their result, or why their problem-solving approach was successful. Approaching with inquiry, even when the student …
Think back to your school days. What do you remember learning? Not the subjects or topics you know you learned, but what learning activities do you actually remember? My memories don’t include most of my time in classes. I remember the fact of taking courses, but would be hard-pressed to tell you what I learned …
(I haven’t lost my mind. Allow me to explain.) Math and math-adjacent fields faced a crisis in the 1970s when digital calculators arrived in students’ hands. These were just basic versions, nothing close to scientific or graphing calculators (just go look up the TI-30!), but they were a quantum leap ahead of the slide rule …
