Keynotes and workshops for K–12 teachers, higher education faculty, and administrators. In every session, including the AI work, inquiry and pedagogy drive the technology, never the reverse.
AI
Pedagogy-Driven AI
Inquiry First, Artificial Intelligence Second
Artificial intelligence offers teachers a genuine opportunity, but only when pedagogy leads. Grounded in the inquiry learning cycle, this session examines where AI authentically strengthens each phase of learning, from sparking curiosity to assessment, and where it quietly undermines the productive struggle that learning requires. Classroom-tested examples meet honest debate about integrity, equity, and accountability, so participants leave with both a working toolkit and a working conscience.
AI
AI and the Art of the Question
Keeping Curiosity Alive in the Age of Instant Answers
When any answer is seconds away, the question becomes the scarcest thing in the room. Rooted in curiosity research and the science of information gaps, this session shares strategies for using AI to widen the gap between what students know and what they want to know, rather than close it prematurely. Teachers take home concrete techniques for protecting wonder, prediction, and productive uncertainty in an AI-saturated world.
AI
Teachers as Toolmakers
Building Your Own Classroom Apps with AI
The most meaningful classroom technology might be the tool you build yourself. Drawing on simulations, review games, and assistive technology built for and with my own students, this hands-on session guides teachers through designing and publishing a working app around a real lesson, with AI as the builder and pedagogy as the blueprint. No coding experience required, only a clear picture of what your students need.
Curiosity & Inquiry
Sparking Curiosity
Using Questions to Fuel Instruction
Using examples from the classroom, research, literature, and film, this session explores curiosity as both a cognitive construct and an omnipresent motivational force. Student questions become the seeds of real learning, and case studies and personal stories model simple strategies for planting them. The emphasis stays on practical moves teachers can use immediately, and on technology as a strategic partner in the process.
Curiosity & Inquiry
Students as Heroes
The Learning Cycle as a Call to Adventure
Placed side by side, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and the inquiry-based learning cycle share a shape: an engaged, challenged participant, intervention from a mentor, and a transformation that sends the learner home changed. The session turns that shared shape into tangible strategies for using the Hero's Journey as a lesson-planning tool, so that lessons engage students for the same reason great stories do.
Curiosity & Inquiry
Explore-Flip-Apply
Video and Multimedia Inside the Learning Cycle
Misconceptions about the flipped classroom remain rampant. This session deconstructs and redefines the concept, placing video inside an inquiry-based learning cycle where multimedia facilitates knowledge construction rather than replaces it. Grounded in current research, including the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, participants explore an instructional model along with practical tools for designing, producing, and sharing instructional video.
Curiosity & Inquiry
Reflective Practice
Embracing the Mess of Learning
Research calls for educators to place exploration before explanation, yet the mess of student discovery and the surfacing of misconceptions can challenge any teacher's pedagogical toolkit. Through case studies and classroom examples, this session helps educators embrace the mess of active learning and treat it as evidence that learning is actually happening.
Curiosity & Inquiry
PseudoTeaching
Diagnosis and Treatment
Physics teachers Frank Noschese and John Burk define pseudoteaching as a lesson that looks like it should produce meaningful learning but results in almost none. Through video, classroom examples, and student testimonials, this session shares my own pseudoteaching, caught on camera, then works to diagnose and treat the condition.
EdTech
Your EdTech Mission
Grounding Technology in a Timeless Pedagogy
Rushton Hurley likes to say that technology won't turn a bad teacher into a good one, but a good teacher, using technology well, can do great things. The newest tool often distracts from learning rather than empowers it, and great teaching predates every device in the room. Through personal stories and live demonstrations, teachers build a simple, trusted toolkit and write an EdTech mission statement grounded in pedagogy and transcending any single technology.
Every offering is available as a presentation or workshop. Description and content are flexible based on need.
