Learning in Progress

Post first published on FTEdTech If you were lucky enough to hear Donalyn Miller speak this week you might be feeling inspired to work on building a culture of readers that are engaged and intrinsically motivated through strategies like the 40 Book Challenge. Not sure what I'm talking about? You can get the gist of the what the 40 book challenge is about here, and you might modify it to match the number of weeks we have left in the year: I would also suggest before you get started, that you might want to check out Miller's 40 Book Challenge Revisited post. Getting Started Right Now with Small Shifts You don't have to wait until the beginning of next year to get started with something like the 40 Book Challenge. We can start making small shifts in practice to encourage wider reading. Use your School Library First, you don't have to worry about the size of your classroom library. Our school libraries are stacked with tons of amazing books, and our libra

Post was also shared on FTEdTech Some time last Spring, I heard the podcast "Digital Readers Read in an F-Pattern" by Teach Thought. This episode, hosted by Ryan Schaaf, marked the beginning of my newest journey to understand how our students are processing information in a digital environment and how we might help them focus their attention in a world of distractions. Because of the podcast, I was inspired to pick up my own (digital) copy of  Reinventing Learning for the Always On Generation: Strategies and Apps that Work  by Ian Jukes and Ryan Schaaf. The considerations and research they explore are fascinating to me and there are many implications for classroom practice that I think are worth time to discuss and study. The F-Pattern In the podcast and through the book, I was introduced to the idea of F-Pattern reading and research conducted by the Nielsen Normal Group on Eye Tracking .  What does this mean for the classroom? I have a lot of questi

Post was also published on FTIS EdTech Chances are if you asked your students how they learned how to do something outside of school, they would reply, "I just YouTube-d it". We live in a highly visual and media rich world, and our digital natives are certainly adept at creating their own content. In a world, where according to Ian Junes and Ryan Schaaf, authors of  Reinventing Learning for the Always On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work “Every minute of every day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 100 hours of new video are uploaded,” you might wonder: is video becoming the new "old standby" project for when we can't think of anything else to assign our students? With endless tools and app smashing techniques, it is true, that even our youngest students can produce quality, engaging videos that demonstrate their learning in creative ways; however, what could we add to the list of choices that would challenge their critical thinking skills and