Birdhouse Learning Labs

Breathe: A Vision & Framework for Human-Centered Learning Envionrments

Book - Available Now

Much of the modern education system is built upon values like standardization, efficiency, mass production, quantification, mechanization, and technology. These priorities play an important role in modern education and society, yet none are capable of drawing learners into meaning-rich, authentic, engaging, and transformational learning experiences. For that, we must turn to the best of ancient knowledge and modern research. In this book, Dr. Bernard Bull offers a vision and framework for human-centered learning environments that prioritize deeply human phenomena like adventure, agency, compassion, connectedness, experimentation, play, mastery, growth, meaning, purpose, wonder, and mystery.

Edu Futures

Podcast - Season 1 Available Now

Dr. Bernard Bull hosts this weekly podcast about forecasts, frontiers, and futures in education. Join us as we co-create the future of education, one conversation at a time.

Learning Beyond Letter Grades: Promising Practices in Feedback and Assessment

Book - Coming in 2021 / Documentary Coming in 2022

There are dozens of texts focused upon academic assessment practices, both applied and more research-based, but there is a vacuum when it comes to books that look at the underlying beliefs, values, philosophies, and implications of letter grades and assessment in contemporary education. Learning Beyond Letter Grades helps fill this void by offering a substantive analysis and critique of current assessment and grading practices, considering affordances and limitations, and challenging readers to design grading and assessment practices that amplify rather than muzzle their core beliefs, values, and philosophies of education.

Humanizing the Online Classroom

Book - Coming Soon in 2021

This book offers practical tips for designing and facilitating online learning that seeks out and celebrates the human experience. The author offers eight shifts in thinking and practice that promise to engage, enrich, and inspire. Discover tips on how to tap into the power of wonder, curiosity, and meaning; invite learners to become co-creators of a vibrant learning community; nurture deep and valued mentoring relationships; and replace a culture of compliance and earning with one of authentic and lasting learning.

Methods of Meaning: Learners With a Why

Book - Coming in 2022 / Documentary - Coming in 2023

While there is much that we can do to create more vibrant and inspiring classrooms, there is something far more powerful than any educational practice, a deep sense of meaning and purpose in each learner. That is the focus of this book, exploring what happens when learners are provided with the support and guidance to discover and embrace a compelling why for learning.

The Lincoln Test: A Legacy of Learning Beyond Credentials

Book - Coming in 2022

Learning is more important than credentials. While credentials open doors to opportunity, true learning is what opens the door to actual impact in the world. Drawing from the central example of Abraham Lincoln, who become a practicing lawyer and later President without ever earning a formal academic credential, this book challenges us to embrace a true culture of learning in schools and society over a culture of earning credentials.

Quests & Missions Over Titles & Positions

Book - Coming in 2023

What makes for a rich and rewarding life of work? Is it achieving that desired title of President, CEO, Doctor, Professor, Actor, Author, Playwright, Teacher, or Founder? Is it climbing the corporate, organizational, or societal ladder until you achieve the financial and social rewards that you seek? Or is it embarking on missions that matter, quests that challenge and inspire you to make a true difference in your family, workplace, community, and the world? This book takes you on a journey to learn from people who chose the latter, and how it make all the difference in their lives and the lives of others.

Methods of Mystery: Cultivating Curious Learners

Book - Coming in 2023 / Documentary - Coming in 2024

There is little that is more intriguing and curiosity-inducing than the unraveling of a good mystery. The great news is that we live in a world full of mysteries. Even with all of the modern tools and scientific advancements, we are surrounded by mysteries. While schools struggle and battle over resources, we find that mystery, one of the most powerful learning resources in the universe, is readily available to all of us. This text invites you on a journey to explore how to design classrooms and schools that flow from mystery, and the many benefits that this creates for learners.

Methods of Kindness: When Learners Know That You Care

Book - Coming in 2024 / Documentary - Coming in 2025

We've all heard the saying that kids don't care what you know until they know that you care, but kindness and caring is more than a method to get students to learn. It is a way of being, one that happens to bring with it countless benefits for the classroom as well. This book is a masterclass on tangible ways to practice kindness in your classroom and school.

Online Learning Reimagined

Book - coming in 2025

From its emergence in the 1990s, online learning struggled to escape the ways of thinking and being common in the physical classroom. Instead of growing as a field of study, each new generation of educators returned to the methods and metaphors of the past. What would happen if we allowed ourselves to let go of the classroom construct and truly imagine new and distinct ways of learning and interacting in the online world? That is the central question in this book. As one way of exploring the question, the author offers ten imaginative possible futures to extend our thinking and inspire our creative action in online learning.

Made by Measurement: Education Priorities Revisited

Book - Coming in 2026

This text invites readers to explore how measurement shapes and makes much of what happens in schools. It offers a critique of the narrow and dominant measures in education, followed by offering a series of chapters that explore the promising work of researchers and schools on measuring that which matters most to them.

Let's create a world where inspiring learning is pervasive.