Adult Learning
Effective strategies and principles for educating mature learners, including self-directed approaches, experiential techniques, and practical application of knowledge to real-world scenarios.
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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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I Know a Grackle
My dad kept a bird book with a life list penciled inside the front cover. I don’t think he updated it very often. It was one of those things that surfaced years…
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Canvas “Auto Pacer:” Custom Student Check-Ins for Self-Paced Courses
A Note on Student Data and AI Processing When the tool drafts check-in messages, it sends each student’s name, course name, and assignment progress to the Claude API hosted by Anthropic. This…
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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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Keynote at the Black Hills Library Mini-Conference
A keynote at the Black Hills Library Mini-Conference that introduced rural and small-town librarians to generative AI through a four-part structure built around a “human in the loop” ethical framework, interactive demonstrations,…
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Google Sheets Efficiency for Administrative Assistants: Mixed Skill Levels, Applications, and Collaboration
A 90-minute Google Sheets session for Douglas School District administrative staff that used a colored-sticker skill check-in and mixed-expertise grouping to make a single session work across a wide range of comfort…
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Biomimicry in Learning: Pine Cones & Released Content
This piece has been folded into Biomimicry as a Lens: Coyotes, Pine Cones, and Prairie Grass, which consolidates the four-part series into one essay. The pine cone section is there.
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Collaborative Inquiry: Teaching an Accelerated Undergrad Ed Tech Methods Course Through Podcasting
An accelerated 1-credit ed tech methods course at Dakota State University that used collaborative podcasting and essential questions to compress a 3-credit experience into a flexible, peer-driven asynchronous format for working adults.
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Implementing a Statewide Professional Learning Platform
The launch of a statewide professional learning platform that replaced an outdated system with a unified LMS, and what the implementation taught about centralizing professional development at scale.
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Audio-Only Options: Do You Really Need Instructional Videos?
Ask most people building a course how to make it better and the answer usually involves more video: a welcome video, a video per module, a recorded walkthrough of every page. Video…
