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"they are part of the 21st century student's DNA at this point."
http://www.focus2achieve.com/blog/smartphones-in-the-classroom

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https://twitter.com/LJSMCDONOUGH

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https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/64728216-lisa-mcdonough

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This book is a quick dictionary of tools like Google classroom, Padlet & Screen Castify - the WHY? briefly explained as well as SET UP.

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TO DO: create a lightning round book talk for these new fiction titles. Share with 4-6th grades.

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The Innovator's Mindset George Couros
The current buzz is RIGHT HERE for future ready teaching and learning.

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By Will Richardson

I'm becoming more curious about curiosity. I'm beginning to think it's the only "C" that truly matters, and that it's been badly disrespected in all the conversation around the 4Cs or 7Cs or howevermanyCs that people have been throwing around.

I mean really, when it comes to learning, what comes before curiosity?

Critical thinking doesn't, because if you're not curious as to whether something is true or fake or accurate or real, you won't really think very hard about it.

Creativity doesn't, because making stuff is borne out of the curiosity of "What if?" What if I try this note here? What if I apply this touch of paint there? What if I mixed these two things together, or built another arm on that robot, or...

Communication doesn't come before curiosity, because if you're not curious about your audience, if you're not using curiosity-driven empathy to craft your message, it probably won't get across.

And collaboration? Isn't that rooted in the curiosity of what other people might know and contribute to your own learning? People don't collaborate for the sake of collaborating...except in schools, of course.

Think of most skills, all the stuff that doesn't show up on the report card, all the stuff that probably matters more than the stuff that shows up on the report card, and you'll find they are steeped in curiosity. Problem solving, problem finding, persistence, cooperation, adaptability, initiative...(add your 200 more here). Which of those doesn't require being curious first and foremost? Can you be any of that if you're not?

Hard to find one.

Reality: Kids are curious as hell when they're 3, 4, 5 years old. They're not so curious any more when they're 13, 14, 15, years old, at least not about what's in the curriculum. And the discussion around why is long over: we kill it in schools.

Reality #2: The most "successful" (and you can define that just about any way you want) people moving forward will be the most curious. The ones who are constantly asking questions. The ones who are always wondering "What if?"

Reality #3: Connection amplifies curiosity. This Internet thing has been the greatest boon to curiosity ever. I mean think about having a connection and NOT being curious. Sad!

So, what are we doing in schools to develop curious, connected, learners? Because the first without the second ain't gonna cut it in the modern world.
Image credit
Also published on Medium.

Filed Under: learning

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I'm becoming more curious about curiosity. I'm beginning to think it's the only "C" that truly matters, and that it's been badly disrespected in all the conversation around the 4Cs or 7Cs or howevermanyCs that people have been throwing around. I mean really, when it comes to learning, what comes before curiosity?

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DIGCIT not as a one and done, but integrated throughout teaching and learning.

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This is Really Happening Erin Shack
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me  Sherman Alexie

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On his first day in the seventh grade, Sherman Alexie opened up his school-assigned math book and found his mother's maiden name written in it. "I was looking at a 30-year-old math book," he says - and that was the moment he knew that he needed to leave his home.

Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. His mother was one of the few people who could still speak the native language, but she didn't teach it to him. In his new memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, he describes growing up surrounded by poverty, alcoholism and violence.

"I knew - because of my race, and my class, and rural geography ... all these forces that crush all sorts of American kids, crush their hopes and dreams - I knew I had no chance unless I left and went to a better school," he says.

The reservation school, Alexie explains, not only wasn't preparing him for college; it wasn't even preparing him to think about college. Eventually, he found his way to college and became an award-winning writer. He received the PEN/Faulkner Award for his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Alexie says he came of age as a writer during a "golden era" of Native American literature. He remembers a very active period of publishing for dozens of Native American writers all across the country. More recently though, he's seen a "fallow period."

"There was more going on in Native American literature in 1991 than there is now," he says. "I kept making the joke about being 'Indian du jour, and it's been a very long day.' "

He's hoping that, with the emergence of new writers, some of whom he's taught and mentored, the sun is setting on that very long day.

"I really hope that like 10 or 12 Native writers, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, really launch into the national consciousness ..." he says. "So I don't have to answer all the questions, so I don't have to get invited to all the conferences. Share the burden of being a public figure Indian! Come on, people! Hurry up, finish your books!"

Interview Highlights

A Memoir

Hardcover, 457 pages |
On the legacy of a very difficult childhood
I've been sober now for 26 years, but I am bi-polar, I do have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A recent study from Johns Hopkins studying reservations found that Indian children on reservations have the same rate of PTSD as combat veterans. So I imagine if they did that study in poor white communities or other poor minority communities they'd find the same sort of numbers.
On being bullied as a kid
When you grow up in a warrior culture, an extremely masculine culture, tears can be seen as a sign of weakness. ... Any surrender, any conceding of anything can also be seen as a sign of weakness. I've always been a rather androgynous, emotional person, so my emotional state, my androgyny - I was more androgynous as a youth than now - but I think all of that combined to make me a target.

It wasn't just the influence of tribal cultures, it was the assimilation into fundamentalist Christianity, which is even more warrior culture, even more honor culture, and even more suspicious of difference. So I was getting bombarded not only by the more fundamentalist aspects of my tribe, but the more fundamentalist aspects of our assimilation into Christianity. So that was going on all around us, and, in fact, in second grade we had this ex-nun teacher who put us into stress positions as torture.
On learning that his mother was conceived by rape
She told me that in my teen years as I was going to school off the reservation, as I was preparing for a life off the reservation, as I was preparing to become this person I am now. Looking back, I think it was my mother's highly dysfunctional way to tell me, to warn me, about what a man can be ... hoping that I would become a good man, a man who treated women with respect. A man who honored women and their power, and a man who would not become a criminal. I think it was her highly dysfunctional version of the sex talk.
On the book's title, taken from the Dusty Springfield song
My mom sang a lot and she was always singing the songs on the radio. ... Music filled my childhood, as it does with a whole bunch of folks. So I looked at my birth year and I thought, "What songs would my mother have been singing in my birth year?"

I looked through the songs and I hit on Dusty Springfield's song ["You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"], which of course I've heard, everybody's heard, everybody knows. Somebody called that the most heartbreaking love song of all time, and I don't disagree. ... I mean, sitting here right now I can't remember a specific instance of [my mother] saying "I love you." Nothing is coming to mind, and not from my father either.
On being influenced by white medical professionals as a child

I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, 'What's this strange feathered creature following me?'

I had brain surgery when I was a kid, and I spent most of my first seven years of my life off the reservation, in and out of hospitals, for speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, so it ended up being as a toddler that my primary peer group was white, adult doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, nuns, priests at the Catholic hospitals, so you become who you're with.

So in those early formative years, I was primarily influenced by all these obsessive-compulsive workaholic white people who had gone to college. So I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, "What's this strange feathered creature following me?"

So at the time, I was being raised by my native family, of course, but I was being influenced by them, but I was also being influenced by white folks in a way that natives of my generation on my reservation did not receive then. I was being given so much kindness and care. I was being taken care of in a way by white folks that natives on my reservation of my generation were not.
On the moment he woke up after a recent brain surgery
It's been, I guess, 19 months since surgery, and whenever I even ponder that question, as I am pondering it now, I start to cry. Waking up after surgery is the greatest moment of my life. It made me realize despite all the trauma, despite all my past and current mental illnesses, despite any pain that I have, that my life as I've constructed, as it has been constructed around me and for me, is something amazing, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to be an indigenous man married to an indigenous woman with indigenous children in 21st-century United States. I am happy to be here, despite everything. That feeling has made me a slightly different person.
Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey contributed to this story.

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Sherman Alexie Says He's Been 'Indian Du Jour' For A 'Very Long Day'

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On his first day in the seventh grade, Sherman Alexie opened up his school-assigned math book and found his mother's maiden name written in it. "I was looking at a 30-year-old math book," he says - and that was the moment he knew that he needed to leave his home.

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"There is a room in this school that no one knows but me. If I could teleport, I'd be there now."

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Monster : A Graphic Novel  Walter Dean Myers
March: Book Three  John Lewis

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REP. JOHN LEWIS's most recent installment in his graphic-novel memoir trilogy, "March: Book Three," has just cleaned up at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards.

"March," co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, received several honors, including the Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award, which recognizes an African American author of a book for kids.

"March" also won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young-adult literature; the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award; and the YALSA Award for excellence in young-adult nonfiction.

Last year, "March" became the first graphic novel to win the National Book Award.

[Rep. John Lewis's National Book Award win is a milestone moment for graphic novels]

On Monday, the ALA announced the top books, video and audio books for children and young adults - including the Caldecott and Newbery awards - during its midwinter meeting in Atlanta.

Elsewhere, " We Are Growing: A Mo Willems Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! Book," by Laurie Keller, won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for distinguished beginning reader books.

For the full list of honorees, go to www.ala.org/yma.

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John Lewis's 'March: Book Three' wins four awards for books for young readers

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REP. JOHN LEWIS's most recent installment in his graphic-novel memoir trilogy, "March: Book Three," has just cleaned up at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards. "March," co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, received several honors, including the Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award, which recognizes an African American author of a book for kids.

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A List of Cages  Robin Roe
The Hate U Give  Angie Thomas
Ghost, also Patina
Jason Reynolds

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First Book Q&A with Author Jason Reynolds

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Jason Reynolds' powerful, award-winning books for young readers are gripping, contemporary must-reads. Read more about the author and his stories from his "All American Boys" tour on our blog - https://blog.firstbook.org/2016/08/19/qa-author-jason-reynolds/