About the Author

Brian Donnelly
Not unlike other kids their age, my son Mathew (age 12) and daughter Kathryn (age 13) would live at the computer if we let them; so learning that their dad was going to host a blog sort of impressed them.  Their enthusiasm dropped when they realized I’ll be blogging about education, but they did say that adding technology into the discussion was sort of cool. Actually, as a middle school teacher I can relate to their perception of school as boring. One of my goals for this blog is to spark conversation about how technologies, such as curriculum and software from Autodesk, can play a role in reshaping education by blending academics with real-world experiences that engage students in learning.

I’ve lived in the world of design and technology for a long time, starting with a career in the 1970s teaching drafting and construction at the high school level.  Perhaps because I viscerally remember what it took to develop a drawing with pencil and T square, I often find myself more amazed than my students by the incredible technological innovations that help us explore and communicate and collaborate with creative ideas. 

I have had the good fortune of pursuing dual careers in business and education.  I worked full time for two major Silicon Valley firms as an industrial designer and project manager. I also was president of a Taiwanese-based design and manufacturing corporation. As an educator, I worked for seventeen years in higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles; Southern Illinois University; and San Francisco State University.  In recent years, I’ve been working at the K-12 level in Career Technical Education.  As the Industrial Technology and Engineering Program teacher at Harper Junior high in Davis, California, I collaborate with colleagues on finding innovative approaches to science, technology, engineering, and math education. You will see evidence of our work in the 2008 and 2009 editions of Autodesk DesignKids for which I served as one of the lead authors.

Twenty-eight years after earning a degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, I am now working to finish my doctorate in Educational Leadership at the University of California, Davis. The issues that I am researching and the things that really excite me center on seeing how “we can do school differently.”  One thing I know for sure is that the world of work has changed —many of the jobs that today’s students will pursue don’t even exist yet!  In light of this, we have a big challenge ahead in radically transforming the world of education by rethinking what we mean by “classroom,” and imagining a new type of teacher who embraces collaboration and feels at home with leveraging the power of technology to support student learning.  If I can stay focused on that theme in this blog, maybe my kids will think their dad is kind of cool.