Education & Teacher Conferences

A year ago, I found myself drawn to an intriguing question: when showing educational videos, should we turn captions on to help students learn or focus? In my experience, most video services provide caption capabilities, and many turn them on by default. For this reason, I assumed that we have good reason to use captions. […]

Few ideas in education have seen a greater pendulum swing than Dr. Carol Dweck’s concept of Mindset. When she published her book in 2006, it became the must-read text that launched a thousand posters. Even ten years later, practically every school I visited had a wall of growth mindset catch phrases, and a block-capitals sign […]

Back in January, I wrote about a study on classroom uses of humor. The headlines: All this helpful information, however, came with a drawback: the study relied entirely on students’ ratings of how they felt. Such “self-report” data isn’t nothing, but it’s not the most persuasive kind of data. What would we find if we […]

As AI changes the education landscape moment by moment, we can expect a steady flow of studies offering us guidance about its use. We’re happy to have all that research, but it does come with a probable danger. Every month or so, we will likely hear that a study has DEFINITIVELY concluded Like Celine Dion’s […]

Anna Abraham’s The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths didn’t necessarily introduce me to entirely new creativity myths—I’ve spent enough time around psychology, neuroscience, and education to already know the usual suspects. The “right-brained creative.” The tortured genius. But we may still be romanticized by ideas like psychedelics unlock some dormant creative capaci…

If you have a colleague who uses mini-whiteboards, you know the passion that these simple tools inspire. According to the fervent accounts I read on Twitter and hear at conferences, MWBs increase student participation, reduce teacher stress, and cure most cases of bursitis. (I might have made up that last one.) Up to now, I’ve […]

Should our students teach their peers? The obvious answer to this question is: “yes, of course.” Experience shows that teaching leads to greater understanding for the person who did the teaching. After all, when I figure out how to explain “tragedy” to my sophomores, I end up knowing more about tragedy than I did before. […]

Sleep is the wonder drug we can all afford. It reduces stress and depression, increases concentration and academic performance, lowers blood pressure, fosters self-regulation, and provides health benefits too numerous to mention. For all these reasons, we’re excited when we find strategies that reliably help students get more sleep. For instance, several months ago I […]

Can AI teach creativity? This question feels oddly self-contradictory. Creativity feels like the most human of human characteristics — how could a chatbot teach it? A recent study put that assumption to the test, and arrives at helpfully provocative conclusions. Here’s the story: How Many Ways Can You Use an Umbrella? “Creativity” poses a fascinating […]

When I hit the trigger words “Don’t be a victim” I knew I was not arriving to Rise Above in a neutral headspace. Anything that uses this phrase carries a certain weight—it’s one of those ideas that can either feel clarifying or quietly accusatory depending on the day you’re having, and if I’m being honest, […]

Research doesn’t often sound fun, so you can imagine my enthusiasm when I came across a study exploring Minecraft. Yes, that Minecraft – with the blocks and the digging and the building. And those fluffy animals that bound around the screen. Specifically, a research team in Ireland – led by Dr. Eadaoin Slattery – wondered […]

We teachers have LOTS to learn from cognitive science: No doubt, we want to pass many of these ideas on to our students. As they learn geometry and spelling and the atomic mass of carbon, they can also learn when to use retrieval practice. One specific example: we have many reasons to think that note-taking […]