Chris Aviles

Chris Aviles is a teacher at Knollwood middle school in the Fair Haven school district in Fair Haven, New Jersey. There he runs the renown Fair Haven Innovates program he created in 2015. The Fair Haven Innovates program is Fair Haven school district’s 21st century life, innovation, and technology program for 4th to 8th graders. In FH Innovates, Chris helps his students create and sell products that solve problems so their student-run businesses can turn a real profit. Part of the FH Innovates program includes the FH Knights, the first middle school esports team in the country. As coach of the FH Knights, Aviles and his players take on all comers including other middle schools, high schools, and colleges. To help other schools in New Jersey bring esports and all its benefits to students, Chris founded a nonprofit Garden State Esports. Chris is also a recovering high school English teacher. Before coming to Fair Haven, Chris taught English for ten years. It was back then that Chris stopped whole class instruction and started blending learning. To further engage and motivate his kids, Chris turned his classroom into a video game using Gamification, Game-Based Learning, and yearlong Alternate Reality games. It was at this same time that Chris decided to document his evolving pedagogy on a blog. In 2013, Teched Up Teacher was born. Chris is passionate about the crossroads where education and technology meet because he has seen the amazing things that can happen when you tech-up teaching. Chris is considered an expert in Gamification, Game-Based Learning, Passion Projects, Project-Based Learning, School Gardens, Blended Learning, Esports, Makerspaces, and Entrepreneurship in the classroom. He holds a Masters in Educational Technology from Boise State and is the Chief Innovation Officer at Silas Solutions Chris has won numerous teaching awards and has been featured in places like ABC news, NBC news, EdWeek, CNET, Scholastic, Times for Kids, EdSurge, Upworthy, and Tech & Learning magazine. He is the author of two books: The Edcorps Classroom and The Esports Education Playbook. You can always keep up with Chris on his blog TechedUpTeacher.com.