Resources and Templates

Brief Update! Oh man, nothing like getting injured and sick as heck in the last 10 days of school. For the first time in AGES, I had to leave school last week because I fell physically ill (after making it to my second-floor classroom on crutches nonetheless! But, I'm back to about 90%, we've got 3.5 days until summer, so here are some fun updates before we get to today's wacky template! Job change! Two weeks ago, I found out that I'm staying in the same school, but transit

There is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial that lives rent-free in my brain. It is one of those commercial gems that then morphs into other shower-thought style derivations. You probably know the one. Two people walking toward each other, completely oblivious. One has chocolate. One has peanut butter. They collide. And the result is the greatest food combination in the history of human civilization. It is, when you think about it, a missed connection that actually connec

Almost 30 years ago (in July, 1996)...(god I'm old)...one of the most underrated bands of all time released their debut album Lemon Parade. The third single, released in February of 97, is what created a core musical memory for me. The song opens with its title and perfect follow-up statement: If you could only see the way she loves me, then maybe you would understand, why I feel this way about our love, and what I must do. Tonic's "If You Could Only See" is the perfect argum

Last Monday, I shared the GoFundMe in the Ditch That Textbook online community. (You should definitely join!!!) When I shared it, I described it as "an off-the-rails idea for a 'social media' template," and a "shower thought meets asking Claude some questions meets Canva during my plan." I expected some nice engagement. Maybe a few teachers saying they'd try it. What I did not expect was for the community to hand me two more ideas before the day was over. That is the thing ab

I want to tell you about the worst argument I have ever witnessed at a Thanksgiving dinner table. It was not about politics. It was not about religion. It was about a parking spot. My father, a man who is, in most other contexts, a perfectly reasonable human being, spent forty-five minutes constructing an airtight legal, moral, and philosophical case for why he had been wronged in a Costco parking lot three weeks prior. He had witnesses. He had a diagram. He had, I am not exa

As you may have noticed, I've continued combing the wide world of the internet to find social media and/or website templates to manipulate into a tool for students to showcase their content mastery. While I've typically grabbed "safe" websites that feel like they have an obvious connection, today's is something that came at me from thinking a little sideways . Here is how this one started. I was brainstorming with Claude this morning, which, if you have been reading this blog

We are four posts into this series now, and I want to take a second to zoom out. Post One was about giving students the tools to recognize that they're already thinking. Post Two was about teaching them to slow down and notice things... really notice them, the way you notice a piece of art differently on the second look than the first. Post Three was about helping students find their words ; about the gap between having a thought and being able to actually say it out l

Let me tell you something about my office. It is covered in Funko Pops. Floor to ceiling, shelf to shelf, every available surface. I have lost count of how many I own, but the number is somewhere north of embarrassing and south of intervention. My classroom alone has roughly thirty of them staring at my students every single day — a silent, big-eyed audience for every lesson I teach. My office in February, before my recent reorganization, there are now more, and it looks craz

How many of us can relate to the following situation? Last year, I was teaching a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, and we had just finished reading a primary source, a firsthand account from a Freedom Rider. Heavy stuff. Important stuff. The kind of stuff that you want students to genuinely sit with. So I asked the class what they thought. Silence . Not the good kind of silence. Not the "I am processing something profound" silence. The "I have not been given a single tool t

Let me tell you something that will either deeply resonate with you or make you close this tab immediately. I think about thinking. Like... a lot. Embarrassingly a lot. From reading philosophy and psychology texts, to staring into the void and wondering why my silly "lizard brain" likes to do things. It's all thinking about thinking (think-ception!?!?!?!?). My thinking about thinking runs so wild that when I'm in the middle of the grocery store buying soup, it becomes a whole

About a month ago , I shared some social media templates both inspired by and missing from the epic collection amassed at Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook Website . If you missed that post, there's a dating profile template, a Nextdoor template, and an Instagram profile page, all free and fully editable to use with your students! As I was looking through my collection of templates I've used to simulate group conversation...I noticed a void that existed. I think finding a w

In 2008, American rock band Vampire Weekend shook the world by asking one simple question... " Who gives a F$%K about an Oxford Comma?" and my brain immediately thought two things: I do... What does the Oxford Comma feel about this song? I cannot be the only person who asks hard-hitting questions like this. I definitely know that I'm not the only one who has conversations with inanimate objects frequently. Do you think I sound a little crazy? If you've ever bumped into a pie

Some of ya'll may remember the game, but not the amazing commercial. As someone who's obsessed with communication and language, one of my classroom staples has always been the physical game Taboo! The premise is simple. Get your teammates to guess a word or concept, but you cannot say any of the words on the card you've drawn. It's always a fun watch because you have to instantly watch someone rethink how to explain a word or phrase without using the most commonly associated

Created with Nano Banana We are in the middle of our 2nd day back from Spring Break, and getting the kids to re-engage is a struggle. How do we take them from 9 days of freedom and lock them back into the rigors and routines of a school day? If my students spent any part of their break as I did, I had plenty of lengthy doomscrolling sessions on social media, because the algorithm is locked into what my brain craves. Even if you're not dealing with the post-vacation slump, we'

If you've ever met me in person, you know I'm a strange guy. I'm also authentically strange. The me you see online, in public, presenting at a conference...that's me baby! My weirdness is probably biological (the woman dyed her hair vibrant colors until the day she died). My academic weirdness stems to a core memory from my senior year of high school (class of '02 baby). I tried to find one of my senior pictures, and this was the best I could do. Also, 2026 me is jealous of h

I've made it no secret that I'm a huge Ditch That Textbook fanboy. Heck, I'm wearing my Ditch... hoodie today! One of my favorite tools that I've ever taken from Matt's massive collection of templates is the Mock Social Media templates ! During ISTE last summer, I was joking around with the illustrious Lunch Lady (aka Kat Crawford ) about some templates that Matt was missing, after she made an epic Myspace throwback (those were the days....). I joked about the lack of a N

We’ve all been there. You just finished explaining a concept, laying out a brilliant plan, or sharing an exciting new idea. You pause, look out at your audience (whether that’s a classroom of students, your kids at the dinner table, or your team at work), and you get… blank stares. It’s frustrating! We spend so much time focusing on the stuff we are sharing, but we rarely stop to think about the hidden gears turning—or completely stalled out—in the minds of the people listen

Two quick announcements at the top: The podcast is bumped to next week; my editing software ate it, so now I'm trying out Adobe Podcast! As an appateaser, here's the new logo/theme! On October 15th at 11E/10C I'll be presenting at the Wakelet Appsmash Festival, showcasing the power of appsmashing wakelet with Edpuzzle! Horizon/West by Thrice If you missed last Friday's post about the Starting Line and Edpuzzle , know that my love of both early 00's music and ed tech runs d

I'm guilty, several times in my past, of creating an assignment for students and simply telling them to "be creative!" As someone who can engage in creative acts, I've known that I struggle when I do not have a deep connection with the prompt. I've also become overwhelmed with ideas and die a slow death from choice paralysis. However, the last three years I've leaned into a tool that is dedicated to harnessing the creative spark and giving users the ability to create anything

I have always been a massive basketball fan. Living near Lawrence, Kansas nearly all of my life has always made the ever presence of the Jayhawks in March impossible to avoid! It always feels like the first four big days of the tournament head into our spring break. However, with us headed back to school on March 18th, I'm excited to bracket literally everything, to give me moments of competitive joy when there are no active games being played. Whether or not you're a basket