Conceptually Speaking

Our guest this week is Vince Bustamante, a social studies consultant and co-author of Great Teaching By Design and the Distance Learning Assessment Playbook. Vince is a member of our extended team and has been doing some great work with conceptual understanding and transfer in his hometown of Alberta, Canada. He’s also been busy writing two stellar books meant to help teachers implement Dr. John Hattie’s research in in-person and distance environments and he shares some great tips on important shifts we can make to adjust to our new COVID reality Vince’s experience as both a classroom teacher and consultant helped him realize that there’s a big gap between the afterglow of a great PD session and successful implementation of what teachers learn. It’s a gap he hopes to close by helping teachers focusing explicitly on students and their learning. Vince’s passion for assessment and implementation made him an equally informative and engaging guest. If ever there was a time for us to reflect on how we view assessment in our classroom it’s right now, so get ready for some insight and enjoy the episode!

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Today’s episode of Conceptually Speaking features author, consultant, and eLearning innovator, Dr. Jennifer Chang Wathall. Dr. Wathall, or Jenny, as she requests we call her, brings a refreshing balance of disciplinary expertise and an eye for innovation. We cover a wide range of topics in our dialogue, from assessment to higher education to online teaching, but the connective tissue between each one is her desire to transform learning and pedagogy. Dr. Walthall advocates for designing authentic learning experiences that blend disciplinary expertise with interdisciplinary collaboration and finding ways to position students as producers and publishers of knowledge, instead of simply consumers. Shifts that are beautifully captured by the way she describes what’s missing in a lot of math instruction. Jenny’s work as a K12 consultant and professor at Hong-Kong University grants her a unique perspective on the wider trends shaping education at all age levels. This episode is full of practical ideas for classroom teachers and philosophical musings for the future of education. Basically, it’s perfect for our current watershed moment.

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Today’s episode of Conceptually Speaking is a special one—Our first episode with an actual student! Though Hannah Testa is a student in Forsyth County, Georgia, that’s just one of many hats she wears. She is also a Founder of the non-profit Hannah4Change, an author, presenter, TEDx speaker, politico, and more besides.  She is one of a growing number of Generation Z activists whose compelling, earnest message demands attention. Her passion is raising awareness and mobilizing people and policy to protect wildlife and the environment and it’ll be immediately apparent that she has the knowledge and skills to do both. Over the course of our conversation, she’ll share her current projects and initiatives as well as offer her thoughts on the best ways for students to engage with different stakeholder groups to affect meaningful change. Environmental policy might be her main focus, but she is just as passionate about engaging fellow teens to rise up and advocate for themselves and their future.  Whether you’re a student, teacher, or parent, our conversation with Hannah will give you hope for the future. Like I said to close out the episode, this is a generation of people who know how to get stuff done. We hope you enjoy!   

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This week on Conceptually Speaking Julie and I spoke with designer of wonder, Caitlin Krause. As you can tell Caitlin doesn’t like labels or nouns to characterize her praxis. They are too static—too inert to capture the intentional fluidity of her work. Though her current specialty is virtual reality, her focus isn’t on hardware, it’s on humanity. There are few people who so consciously and warmly center the experience, wonder, and connective potential of technology quite like Caitlin can. The focus of our dialogue today wasn’t technology itself, but rather the relationships it fosters—with ourselves, with others, and with our environment. In truth, it’s her ability to live in those “in-between-spaces” that makes Caitlin such a compelling designer of learning and leadership. Whether you’re keen on mindfulness practices or a technology junkie, this is the episode for you Not many people discuss cognitive science, Joseph Campbell, and VR headsets in the same breath, but I can’t help but feel ed-tech would be in a better place if they did. Enjoy!

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Today’s episode of Conceptually Speaking features educator, author, consultant, maker, and all around lover of learning, Dan Ryder. As you can tell by his bio, Dan is a bit of a polymath. He writes and presents about creativity, design thinking, maker spaces, comic books, and—as is the focus tonight—improv. It’s those generalist tendencies are what make him such a compelling guest and intuitive educator. Despite his far-flung interests, his concepts of focus for the episode—acceptance, communication, and trust, lie at the heart of all he does. That’s because, like us, Dan understands the value of anchoring learning with powerful concepts and frames. What I love about this episode, and speaking with Dan in general, is the energy and insight he brings to the table. Chats with him have the same exploratory and extemporaneous energy as an improv set. High tempo though it may be, there’s always a pleasant timbre that makes conversation feel easy. Dan has a way of talking to you like an old friend, whether you’ve known him for years or just met. It was the first thing I noticed about him when we met three years ago and it still holds true today. You’re in for a great episode. Enjoy!

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Today’s guests are none other than our very own Nichelle Pinkney and Kayla Duncan. Since the mad dash to distance learning environments last summer, Julie and the team have been hard at work looking to design a suite of courses that would help us spread the word and build a community of practice around learning that transfers. We had a blast designing the Learning Transfer Endorsed Educator Course, and have received a lot of positive feedback during our first two cohorts. As our third cohort kicks off this week, we thought it’d be fun to look back and discuss the creation of the LTEE course and preview some of our upcoming offerings. During the episode, Kayla and Nichelle share their perspective on some of the courses anchoring concepts: community, sensemaking, and accessibility. Kayla has gotten rave reviews on the overall course design—especially the unit storyboard that is completed throughout the course. And as a veteran online instruction facilitator, Nichelle shares her insight into the importance of keeping our courses accessible for all users. Overall, we thought today’s episode would be a fun peek behind a curtain for a project that we’re really excited about continuing to expand and grow in the weeks and months to come. We hope you enjoy and consider joining an upcoming cohort!

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Today’s guest is Dr. Michael Crawford--co-founder of Edspace, a social learning network for educators. As someone with expertise and insight into the evolving nature of education, professional development, and educational technology, he was the perfect guest for our current moment. Our conversation touches on a wide variety of topics, from wellness, to new models of professional learning, to the power of autonomy for teachers and students. What makes Michael such a great thinker and voice in education is his ability to recognize the connective tissue between various emerging research and trends within education. It’s at that point of convergence, the idea of Edspace emerged. There are a ton of great ideas and things to ponder about the future of professional learning, teacher training, and education in general during this episode. We hope you enjoy.    

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In this week’s episode of Conceptually Speaking, Julie and I chatted With Joaquin Tomayo, a senior policy advisor at the Education Council, who looks to leverage the science of learning to create more equitable systems for students through research and policy. What I loved about this conversation was Jaoquin’s ability to take some of education's oldest truisms—like the importance of relationships, why our learning environment matters, and how education as a system is broken—and provide keen insight into the “why.” If we hope to create systems and policies that truly serve the best interest of their students, understanding these deeper causal mechanisms is a vital piece of repairing the education puzzle. Luckily, we have folks like Jaoquin who are working to synthesize systems thinking and scientific knowledge to advocate for policy that helps all students feel the sense of belonging they deserve. To show just how good this episode was, it clocked in at a whopping hour and ten minutes. It might take a few sittings to get through, but it’s worth the extra helpings, as it is chock full of insight.

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This week on Conceptually Speaking we welcomed Rafel Angel, a language educator and founder of the Ampersand Consulting Group. To say that Rafael is passionate about world languages is a bit of an understatement. When we first shared the learning transfer mental model with him, he sent back a PDF exploring anchoring concepts in no less than eight different languages. Impressive as that is, what really made Rafael a compelling guest was the beauty and artistry with which he speaks about communication. For him, learning other languages is about much more than memorizing terms and conjugating verbs—it’s about finding the heart of other cultures, regions, and countries. It’s about sharing and connecting through stories, values, and communion. Rafael’s ability to capture the essence of communication and language is inspiring. Whether you’re a polyglot or a monolingual like myself, this episode is rich with wisdom about the power of language, meaning, and identity. We hope you enjoy! 

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 Our guest this week is Ayo Magwood, founder of Uprooting Inequity—her platform dedicated to sharing resources, curriculum & instructional strategies for teaching about systemic racism & social justice through historical and civics education frameworks. From the moment this podcast begins, Ayo’s deep knowledge of racism, history, and pedagogy is spellbinding. In our overly specialized and atomized academic world, her ability to find an intersection between these three domains set her apart from a lot of other folks working in this field. Understanding problems as complex as systemic racism require nuance, thorough research, and the ability to synthesize countless threads of information. Teaching others about it requires patience, vulnerability, and an commitment. In our short time together, it’s clear Ayo possesses all these traits, as well as a being a great conversationalist, in droves. It’s a skillset and disposition our country needs right now, as more and more people are waking up to the corrosive effects racism has on our systems and structures and on the lives of Black Americans. Luckily, Ayo’s research and knowledge are perfectly suited to help educators and communities understand the roots of these issues, not just skim the surface. This episode was one of my favorites so far, as Ayo is as passionate and she is knowledgeable. She isn’t afraid to model vulnerability and she knows how to frame controversial issues in ways that lead to productive growth and discussion. Overall, her message is pertinent and clear—to truly end inequity, we must uproot it at its source. To do that, we must understand its history.

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