About Me
I live at the intersection of education and technology. While the intersection is always busy, not everyone knows how to navigate it. I like to help folks do exactly that.
Who I Am
I am Ben Wilkoff. I teach, I build, and I write. I have spent over twenty years in education, starting in a middle school English classroom and winding through district leadership, an edtech startup, a university, and now international higher education.
The through line has not changed. I believe technology should serve people. I believe learning is change. And I believe that showing up every day to do the work matters more than any one big idea.
Lately that daily practice looks like software. I design and ship native apps by myself, for phones, TVs, desktops, and the web, each from one shared codebase with no servers to run. I still think of it as teaching. The lesson plans are just written in Swift, Kotlin, and C# now.
I own a typewriter and I collect Laserdiscs. I love my three children quite a bit. I create at least one new thing every day. I believe in the power of sustained effort toward important goals.
I was compelled to share my story of creating an artificial separation between technology and pedagogy to defining the connections. I love talking about where I have been, where I am going, and what it takes to frame change for success.
What I Believe
In my own words, from twenty years of posts. These are the ones I keep coming back to.
The Ripe Environment
“I am tired of talking about the tools… What should we really be reaching for? The Ripe Environment. The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom.”
The 95 Theses
“Teachers should be the change they want to see in their schools… Teachers should constantly reinvent the wheel to make it ride smoother and faster over any type of terrain imaginable… Teachers should learn.”
Scale is a Seductive Myth
“I believed that by increasing the scale in which I was creating change was directly proportional to my own sense of purpose and happiness… Scale is a seductive myth.”
It’s the Content, Stupid
“That is why we use blogs to communicate, not because they are easy, not because they are more collaborative, it is simply because they let the content speak for itself. Without content you are nothing. Without great ideas there is no hope for the future. It is the content that matters, not the format.”
The Masculinity Detox
Skills & Expertise
Native App Development
Web & Platform
Education & Leadership
The Personal Stuff
I am a father of three. I collect laserdiscs (yes, really; over a thousand of them). I own a typewriter and I use it. I live in Colorado, by way of Ohio. I try to make at least one new thing every day: a post, a tool, a video, a conversation. That practice is what keeps everything else moving.
I started blogging in 2005, and everything since has grown out of that. From 2013 to 2019 I served on the board of InnEdCo (Innovative Education Colorado) as Programming Chair and then Vice President, helping to run the conference where Colorado’s educators go to learn from one another.
I keep a family website at whitfordwest.family, I have run a few online communities, and I build things for my own kids (a university search tool for my middle son’s college search, for one).
I have never been able to keep the work and the rest of my life separate, and I stopped trying a long time ago.
Get in Touch
I want to talk about education, technology, building things, or what it means to learn. Pick one and write to me.