Ditch the Chat, Build a Workspace · NWAIS
The move past chat-based AI is the workspace: persistent files, atomic notes, agents that read accumulated thinking. For heads, tech directors, and academic deans; offered twice, with Sam Uzwack.
Talks and workshops on AI, technology, and learning in schools — recent sessions, and a record going back more than a decade.
Recent
2026
2026
Five Clarities for Teaching in the Age of AI · NWAIS
Intent, effort, proxies, ambiguity, and the hard-to-measure, with a workshop where teachers redesign an assignment they bring. With Alicia Hale.
2026
Mission-Driven AI Approach · WFIS Future of Schools Forum
An AI approach turns out to be a useful pressure test on a school’s mission. A working session, not a model to copy: what is current, what is past its prime, and what a school will always teach, then what to say out loud for the year ahead. With Sam Uzwack.
Earlier
2019
Building an Innovative Educational Environment · GIX
A thought experiment: with perfect foresight in 2009, what would we have taught for 2019? Since no school can prepare students for a future it can’t see, the case for building an environment that teaches adaptability instead.
2019
All In with Arduinos · NCCE
Why five-dollar microcontrollers belong beside the 3D printer and laser cutter. Empowering students starts with demystifying technology, the way magic is demystified by knowing the trick.
2018
Math + Code + Design: Demystifying 3D Modeling with OpenSCAD · NCCE
A hands-on workshop in OpenSCAD, where you write code and get shapes: 3D modeling as a meeting point for math, programming, and design.
Slides · Tutorial · Pencil · Pencil, corrected · Pencil flower · Pyramid · Twisted extrude · Union & intersection
2018
Bring the Real World In: Meaningful Projects that Engage Students · NCCE
Turning a school’s own unfinished work, from the student newsletter to the transcript and the online course catalog, into real projects for students, and what it takes for those projects to succeed.
2016
Makerspace: The Missing Manual · NWAIS
Lessons from building Eastside Prep’s makerspace: start with the why, know what success looks like, and treat the space itself as a design problem. Includes a spaghetti-and-marshmallow design challenge. With Roger Mack.
2016
Lessons Learned: Building and Maintaining a Thriving Makerspace · NCCE
Why makerspaces are worth the trouble (comfort with failure, design experience, the meeting of the physical and digital) and the philosophy, people, and constant evolution that keep one alive.
2014
Canvas Customizations: Where the LMS Stops and Your School Begins · NCCE
Making the LMS support a school’s culture with CSS, JavaScript, LTI apps, and the API, with live examples from Eastside Prep: grading notes, SIS integration, and student self-assessments.
2013
Making Canvas Your Own · InstructureCon
Why wait for a feature when you can find it or build it? Using the Canvas API and LTI to bolt on what a school needs, and retiring the myth that one LMS should fit all.
2012
Designing Systems for Fluid Teacher Adoption · OSCON
No single product will ever meet a school’s needs. A tour of the school software stack, the two paths by which teachers adopt software, and how to build a tech culture that makes adoption easy.
Slides are shared openly under a CC BY license.
Beyond Eastside Prep, I’m glad to hear from schools and leaders thinking through AI, instruction, and the systems beneath them, if a conversation or some consulting would help. For Eastside Prep matters, write to jbriggs@eastsideprep.org; for anything else, jonathan.briggs@gmail.com.