Hi, I'm Freek.

I’m a teacher, and I build things. Mostly tools, systems, and teaching materials, and lately a bit of software too. What I actually like is the figuring-out: taking a messy problem and making it simple and clear enough that it just works. I used to overcomplicate simple things. I still catch myself doing it. But I keep learning, and these days I push the other way, towards simple and obvious.

I’ve always liked taking things apart to understand them. As a kid I pulled my desktop PC apart and put it back together just to see how it worked. When the WiFi went down, I learned enough about the network to fix it and get us back online.

The first time I really taught someone, I was in high school. I had a crush on a girl, so I burned her a copy of The Sims across a stack of DVDs. Instead of just offering to come install it, I recorded my screen and walked her through installing the game and everything it needed, so she could do it on her own without me there. I spent ages on the wording, trying to get every step clear enough to follow alone. I still ask myself the same question today, just about lessons instead of a game: how do I make this as easy and clear as I can, so the person on the other end gets the best guided experience?

That question is most of what I do now. I teach at Hogeschool Utrecht, and a lot of my work is designing the teaching around a course: curriculum, worksheets, the materials students actually use. I teach and think a lot about creative writing too, and what it really takes to make a story worth reading. Lately I’ve been getting into software design with AI’s help, and the principles turn out to be almost the same as making good teaching materials. Clarity and simplicity run through all of it.

Away from work I make things for the fun of it: woodworking, Magic: the Gathering cubes, and whole worlds and campaigns for the tabletop RPGs I run. You’ll probably also find me bouldering, slacklining, playing a heavy strategy boardgame, reading science fiction or fantasy, or somewhere in a video game.