Design
Designing for Instruction. The articles here are about the day-to-day work of designing learning experiences, training, and professional development. They cover process, method, and implementation: how to prototype and pilot, how to design for mixed skill levels, how to stay current without drowning in noise, and how to build things that hold up in the real conditions where educators and learners actually work.
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Dear L&D: Your Learning Platform Has a Point of View (Published on Training Industry)
My letter “Dear L&D: Your Learning Platform Has a Point of View” is now up on Training Industry as part of their Dear L&D series, where people in the field write directly…
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The Learner Who Shows Up in Week Four
Every cohort has one. Somebody emails in week four asking if it’s too late to join, or logs in for the first time after three weeks of silence because a building crisis…
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Designing for Human Judgement in AI-Powered EdTech
Part 4 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. The first version of my course builder had a problem, and the problem was me. I’d been building a personal tool…
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Low-Bandwidth Course Design
When I work with rural districts across the Great Plains, the same frustration comes up in different words: the course is built, the content is good, and a good share of the…
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The “Other” Training and Delivery Modalities
When it’s time to teach something or share information, most people default to building a presentation. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and it works often enough that the habit sticks. But comfortable isn’t…
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A Review of AI Literacy Books For Kids & Families
Educators and parents looking for AI literacy books for kids will find everything from carefully researched materials to hastily produced content, and a fair amount of the latter was written by AI…
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Outdoor PD for Educator Wellness and Innovation
Working with educational systems across the Great Plains, I keep running into the same pattern: the way we usually do professional development doesn’t touch the problems educators are actually carrying. Here in…
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Second Thoughts on AI-Assisted Game Design in K12
A note added September 2026: I wrote this piece in February 2025 after running a workshop for teachers on having students design educational games with AI tools. I have rewritten it as…
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Better Notifications in Online Learning and Ed Tech
Most teachers I work with are not asking for a better notification system. They are asking for fewer interruptions, and most have given up on getting them. The LMS pings, the email…
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Building AI-Ready Knowledge Bases
A few years ago I wrote a knowledge base for a call center. We were launching a statewide professional learning platform on Canvas, and the vendor’s support staff would be fielding questions…
