Articles
Writing about educational technology, learning design, and the questions that sit underneath both. Articles are organized into three threads: Tools & Power examines the economics and politics of EdTech, Other Lenses draws on speculative fiction, natural systems, and contemplative practice to think differently about design, and Design Practice covers the day-to-day work of building learning experiences that hold up in real conditions.
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Co-Design: Building Learning Experiences Together
This article has moved into Homegrown Learning. The story of the PLC sessions and what they taught me about designing with people rather than for them now opens the Design phase of…
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Prototyping and Piloting Learning Experiences
This article has moved into Homegrown Learning. The Demonstrate phase of the book covers prototyping in more depth than the original article did, and the material on piloting with real learners now…
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Life-Centered Design in E-Learning
Power-hungry AI applications are being folded into educational technology, and into the design process itself, faster than most of us can evaluate them. Wherever you land on that, two things are true:…
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Let’s Look At This Clearly: AI Hype in Ed Tech
A note from September 2026: I wrote this in fall 2024 and have left the argument as it stood then. The critique of hype still holds, but my view of where AI…
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Yes, Online Learning Can Be a Grift
I have been watching the rise of “guru” courses with growing unease. You know the type: flashy ads promising to teach you everything from digital marketing to life coaching in a few…
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What Koan Practice Taught Me About E-Learning (and What I’m Still Figuring Out)
As an e-learning consultant and a student of Zen, I spend a lot of my professional life trying to make learning more efficient and a lot of my personal life sitting with…
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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…
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Why Training Apps/Technology Rollouts Fail (Published on E-Learning Industry)
I’m excited to share my latest article, “Why Training Apps/Technology Rollouts Fail” now published on E-Learning Industry! In this piece, I delve into the common pitfalls organizations face when implementing new training…
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Calm Technology in Educational Settings
Walk into most classrooms that have gone through a recent technology initiative, and you will notice something familiar. There are interactive whiteboards requesting firmware updates, tablets pinging with notifications, an LMS that…
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E-Learning with Atomic Design (Published on E-Learning Industry)
I’m thrilled to announce the publication of my latest article, “E-Learning with Atomic Design” on E-Learning Industry. In this piece, I explore how the principles of atomic design can be applied to…
