Educator.
I didn't go to college with dreams of being a classroom teacher, but after substitute teaching a couple of classes while job hunting after college, I was hooked. I started in Gladewater, Texas teaching 6th grade math and 8th grade keyboarding for high school credit. I had no idea what I was doing, so if you were one of my students: I'm sorry. Hopefully I didn't completely ruin your life? I decided to use my keyboarding class as an opportunity to try out some crazy ideas I had about making class more engaging, so I put them in teams and then assigned each person on each team a role, kind of like a business simulation. There was a CEO, CFO, etc. Then I worked directly with the CEOs while they, in turn, taught the rest of their team the skills needed and relayed deadlines imposed. We had fun and I heard back from several students how much they appreciated my willingness to challenge the traditional understanding of a typing class.
From there, I took a job in Tyler, Texas teaching 7th grade keyboarding (later to be renamed by the State to Touch System Data Entry. Fancy right?) and 8th grade Technology Applications. Upon my hiring, the principal informed me that he trusted me and knew that I could come up with something engaging. So I went to work creating a production-oriented classroom that moved through 'chunks' of material. My favorite 'chunk' was at the end of the semester-long class, they would write grant proposals and give a presentation to appeal/defend their proposal. After a few years, however, I was ready to see if my ideas would scale. I had some success with my band of 160, but I wanted to know if what I was doing would work in a larger context...
From there, I took a job in Tyler, Texas teaching 7th grade keyboarding (later to be renamed by the State to Touch System Data Entry. Fancy right?) and 8th grade Technology Applications. Upon my hiring, the principal informed me that he trusted me and knew that I could come up with something engaging. So I went to work creating a production-oriented classroom that moved through 'chunks' of material. My favorite 'chunk' was at the end of the semester-long class, they would write grant proposals and give a presentation to appeal/defend their proposal. After a few years, however, I was ready to see if my ideas would scale. I had some success with my band of 160, but I wanted to know if what I was doing would work in a larger context...
Pedagogy Coach.
In 2012, Amanda and I moved to Austin, Texas where I was given the opportunity to be an Educational Technologist at a 1-to-1 iPad district, where every student and teacher has their own iPad, provided by the district. This was a massive leap from my desktop computer lab in Tyler and I now had to think about not only what education can look like when every kid has anytime, anywhere access to content, but also learning how to lead others (teachers) into new understandings of learning.
In 2014, we decided to branch out. We packed up a truck and moved to Durham, North Carolina. I am grateful to Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for giving me a place to continue honing my skills in terms of leading teachers down wild rabbit holes of purported education innovation. However, after only one year, I was offered the opportunity to join an organization whose work I had followed for six years prior: The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University. I have worked with teachers, principals, superintendents, instructional technology facilitators, and school library media coordinators from around the state of North Carolina.
In 2014, we decided to branch out. We packed up a truck and moved to Durham, North Carolina. I am grateful to Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for giving me a place to continue honing my skills in terms of leading teachers down wild rabbit holes of purported education innovation. However, after only one year, I was offered the opportunity to join an organization whose work I had followed for six years prior: The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University. I have worked with teachers, principals, superintendents, instructional technology facilitators, and school library media coordinators from around the state of North Carolina.
Consultant.
Along the way, I've done a fair share of consulting with districts and app developers, all looking for innovative ways to shape education. I've worked with a variety of districts, each with their own challenges and opportunities and I've worked with app developers in nearly every stage of the startup journey, from just kicking around an idea to figuring out the implementation of next steps following a successful funding round. It's in my nature to get the right people to the table to ask the right questions and then solve the right problems. If you'd like to know more about my take on your particular situation, feel free to send a note via email.
Researcher.
In August of 2017, I started a PhD program at NC State's College of Design. My dissertation, titled The Designer's Method: Understanding the Feedback You Collect During Prototyping, was published following my successful defense in 2023. At its core, I wanted to know if learning experience designers (LXDs), who often don't have a teaching background, would benefit from an evaluative heuristic assessment tool while trying to get feedback from learner-testers. Using the TPACK framework, I was able to identify several insights that LXDs may have otherwise missed, meaning that as their prototype moved towards final product, there would still be plenty of room for improvement. This kind of transdisciplinary communication has always intrigued me, particularly as someone who frequently finds himself in conversations with people with whom he has no professional overlap of experience.