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What does digital and media literacy mean?

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What does digital and media literacy mean?

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Podcast with 21C Radio

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The terms digital and media literacy have been around for a while now, but I am not sure we all know exactly what those terms mean or have a common definition for them. Is it just using the technology tools out there? Or is it using them in a certain way?

Today I speak with teacher, author and consultant Kristin Ziemke about digital and media literacy and the exciting possibilities and learnings that go along with opening your classroom to the wider world.

A teacher of primary age learners in Chicago, Kristin Ziemke pairs best practice instruction with digital tools to transform learning in the classroom and beyond. Author of Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom an Apple Distinguished Educator and National Board Certified Teacher, Kristin collaborates with educators around the globe as a staff developer, speaker and writer.

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Kristin Ziemke Helps Us Understand What Digital Literacy Is All About

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The terms digital and media literacy have been around for a while now, but I am not sure we all know exactly what those terms mean or have a common definition for them. Is it just using the technology tools out there? Or is it using them in a certain way?

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EdWeek Reading Digitally or Reading Paper

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EdWeek Reading Digitally or Reading Paper

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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This week's question is:
Which is better for students -- reading paper or reading digitally?
We were all supposed to live in a Star Trek world with all reading done electronically and paper books, including textbooks, an antiquated curiosity. How's that working out for us these days, and should it be a future we continue to strive for?

Daniel Willingham, Kristin Ziemke, Lester Laminack and Kimberly Carraway explore that topic today in this post. You can listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Daniel and Kristin on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might be interested in a recent Education Week article, Screens vs. Print: Does Digital Reading Change How Students Get the Big Picture?, as well as a recent post I published at one of my other blogs that's titled New Software Makes Text Easier To "Read."
Response From Daniel Willingham
Daniel Willingham is professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and the author of several books, most recently Raising Kids Who Read. His website is www.danielwillingham.com:
Reading experiences vary. Students read different texts, and for different purposes. Students vary in their background knowledge, reading skills, and confidence. With such diversity of experience, you'd expect that the answer to a question like "screen or paper?" would be murky, at best. Yet it's not. The research literature consistently shows a small cost to comprehension when students read from a screen. This conclusion was drawn as early as the 1970s and '80s, but the question has been revisited in the last five years, and for good reasons. Screens are of much higher quality now, and todays ereaders are designed to recreate the layout and look of text on paper. Yet the new studies show that paper still wins. The comparison has most often been made in college students reading academic materials. In these studies students are asked to read a passage from an electronic textbook and then answer questions about the passage, either with or without access to the text. The consistent finding is that reading on paper is more efficient: that is, comprehension is the same, but students are able to read the paper version more quickly (Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012; Connell et al, 2012; Daniel & Woody, 2013). When experimenters limit reading time, comprehension is better with the paper version (Chen et al, 2014). There are fewer studies of K-12 students reading academic texts, but at least two report the same finding: paper beats screens (Kim & Kim, 2013; Mangen et al, 2013). For this reason I've elsewhere suggested that educators move cautiously when considering electronic textbooks (Daniel & Willingham, 2012). One might expect different results for fiction or light non-fiction. After all, textbooks contain difficult, unfamiliar information and lots of it. Students usually read them for the purpose of learning and remembering. That's not true of the books you would typically download for your Kindle. They wouldn't be as information-dense, and you would read them for pleasure, not to memorize. Fewer studies have compared screen and paper when reading narratives, but existing studies echo the textbook studies--paper is better (Rasmusson, 2015; Zucker et al, 2009). One study reported readers are less likely to say they are "transported" to the fictional world when reading on a screen (Mangen & Kuiken, 2014). It's important to bear in mind, however, that these studies have only measured comprehension, and that the screen disadvantage is small. Screens may hold other advantages--ease of access, for example, or portability--that make for a better overall reading experience. Certainly, people seem to love their ereaders--since 2011, Amazon has sold more ebooks than paper books. To capture a snapshot of readers' more global experience, researchers have conducted surveys posing the simple question "Do you prefer reading on paper or screen?" And with that question screens, at last, look a little better--but not for academic reading. When it comes to textbooks, students want paper (Foasberg, 2014; Mizrachi, 2015; Olsen et al, 2013; Shepperd, Grace & Koch, 2008). In some studies, students report greater fatigue after reading electronic textbooks, so that, as much as the comprehension difference, may drive their preference (Woody, Daniel & Baker, 2010). But students like screens for leisure reading (Foasberg, 2014) and report that they appreciate the convenience of ereaders when travelling, or when they don't want others to know what they are reading (Scholastic Publishers, 2014). The final bit of the puzzle will be to determine why reading from a screen is a bit tougher, and why that difficulty seems to be exacerbated as the material becomes more fact-laden (Rasmussen, 2015). At this point we can only guess. Anecdotal evidence points to the role of spatial information in comprehension and memory. It's long been known that, when reading, spatial information seems to hitch a free ride--we can remember where something appeared in a book or even on a page, even though we did not much think about it when reading (Hasher & Zacks, 1979). People seem to feel that reading from an ebook lacks that feeling of spatial localization. We need further research for more definitive answers. References for Dan's post can be found here.

Response From Kristin Ziemke
Kristin Ziemke (@KristinZiemke) is the co-author of Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-5 Classroom and Connecting Comprehension and Technology:
We know the best way to improve reading proficiency is to spend more time with text and so we must afford our students every opportunity to do this. For me, it's not a debate of print versus digital, but instead an investigation into how we can guide students to become better readers across all types of text. We give them both and then teach them to navigate each effectively. For the last 40 years, we've known what our students need to become proficient lifelong readers. Volume, choice, response and explicit instruction have become the pillars of workshop classrooms around the world. And yet, we continue to refine our reading instruction to better meet the needs of our students. We need to apply the same principles of volume, choice and explicit instruction to digital reading too. Just because our kids have grown up with devices doesn't mean they know how to use them. Digital reading is different than print reading and our minilessons on paper text don't always translate seamlessly to reading on a device. We must teach our students to navigate, interact and apply thinking strategies with text on screen. Then we need to observe, reflect and respond when understanding breaks down and reteach as necessary. Too often when we send a child to read on a device it's task oriented, "Go to National Geographic Kids and read the post about tsunamis. Then meet with your small group to discuss." We need to make time for choice digital reading and guide our kids to know a set of websites and apps that are appropriate and interesting. We provide students time to read, model and discuss what makes reading go well for us on either platform and guide students to understand the "why" behind what they choose to read. As reading evolves we expand our definition of what it means to read and look for all the options available to build comprehension. As media becomes ever more present in our daily life we teach kids to read images and video. We model how to view a short video clip with a wide-awake mind and how to annotate media just as we would a piece of text. We teach students to reread a movie by pausing and watching a selection again to deepen understanding. Today the possibility for response is infinite as we add new multimodal digital tools that invite students to share their learning in a way that makes sense to them. Whether writing on a sticky note or via a video book review, kids create to tell their story. And that creation piece is what inspires students to use their new knowledge, gather feedback and revise and refine their thinking as they go. My hope is that we can move into a place where we're no longer defined by labels like media literacy, digital literacy, or print literacy and instead get to a place where we simply focus on LITERACY. Read, research, write, view, ask, create, share--and then do it all again to learn more. For me, it's not a print versus digital debate; instead, it's kaleidoscopic in nature. We use all the resources available and coach kids to interact, think and respond effectively.
Response From Lester Laminack
Lester Laminack, Professor Emeritus, Western Carolina University now works as a full time writer and consultant. He is an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English and served as co-editor of the NCTE journal Primary Voices and as editor of the Children's Book Review Department. His publications include several professional books and six children's books. His newest book, Writers ARE Readers: Flipping Reading Strategies into Writing Instruction (Heinemann) is now available:

As the 2015-2016 school year opens every student enrolled up through 11 th grade will have been born in the 21 st Century. These students have never lived in a world without touch screens and voice activated search features, digital texts and instant information. They know the glow of an e-reader and seem to enter the world knowing to swipe their tiny fingers across the screen of a tablet. When confronted with the need for information even the youngest ones respond, "Ask Siri" or "just Google it." They are accustomed to information available in seconds, skimming texts and scrolling through the screen to find bits that interest them or answer their questions. And perhaps they are in the habit of taking information at face value without critical examination.

Recently I was conferring with a 7-year-old who was using his iPad to research LeBron James. I asked what he had discovered so far and how he planned to organize that information. He gave me some interesting information including the "fact" that LeBron was killed in an auto accident in Ohio in 2006. As I sat with him to visit some of those pages it became apparent that my little friend had spelled LeBron several different ways as he searched. That, of course, turned up all sorts of information, most of which was completely irrelevant to his purpose and some of which was simply erroneous (e.g. LeBron James is alive and well at the time of this writing).

Following a review of several articles and research summaries it seems there is no definitive answer regarding which is "better." Some point to the need for longitudinal studies while others suggest that comprehension is better when students read paper texts. One concern mentioned frequently is the lack of "deep reading" with digital text. The suggestion here is that students are more apt to skim and scroll with a digital text and more likely to remain focused in the paper text. In addition, there are reports that students prefer the ability to manipulate paper and flip back and forth between pages as information is revealed and their understanding of the text takes shape.

While we could argue the merits of each I believe the answer to this in not an "either/or" situation. Rather I am convinced it must be "both/and". I believe our energy should be devoted to generating the conditions that make reading and information both appealing and engaging. Our classroom and school libraries need to be places where books stand tall in the stacks and face out in displays and on the tops of bookcases. Students need the opportunity to sit with a single book and pour over the images and soak up the language. They need to be able to flip the pages and place a sticky note on a spot they want to come back to. Likewise they need access to the instant information and quick comparisons they can find with a few keystrokes, touches or swipes. They need the opportunity to adjust the font size, alter the layout and stretch an image for a close up look. As readers we need access. We need choices. We need variety.

Response From Kimberly Carraway
Kimberly Carraway, EdM, a learning specialist and educational consultant focusing on the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and educational practice, holds degrees in cognitive studies and elementary education from Vanderbilt University and in learning and teaching from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Transforming Your Teaching: Practical Classroom Strategies Informed by Cognitive Neuroscienceand founder of the Carraway Center for Teaching and Learning:
In today's modern world, there is an incredible appeal to using all of the new digital devices and technologies available to us for as many reasons as possible. However, digital devices significantly affect the way we read. Because our culture is so heavily impacted by reading from digital texts, reading is becoming more fragmented, sporadic, and haphazard. Digital readers are more focused on skimming, scanning, and searching for key words than on constructing meaning, analyzing the text, and learning how to sustain attention long enough to purposefully engage on a personal level with the text. The large amounts of time spent reading digital texts may be negatively impacting the cognitive processes that individuals engage in during the reading process. We should be concerned that the result may be a deficit of the development of in-depth reading processes. Research shows that students score higher on reading comprehension assessments when reading from paper than from reading from a digital source. Students who are accustomed to reading digitally have been found to have a harder time focusing when they sit down to read a harder, longer text. The brain does not multitask, but rather switches attention very quickly between thoughts, topics, information, and situations. Reading on digital devices that have online access, changing visual images, or web links in the margins increases distractibility while reading. The reality, though, is that, like most things in life, reading digitally is not all good or all bad. Teachers should educate students on when, how, and for how long they should be reading from paper versus from a screen. Difficult texts should be read on paper to increase students' linear reading ability, mental representations, spatial and tactile knowledge of the text, and absorption of meaning. For pleasure reading or for searching for key terms in a research situation, digital reading devices are a good resource. Enlarging text on digital devices may also help dyslexic readers improve fluency and comprehension. A few key points about reading digitally versus reading from paper:

Linear reading is different from nonlinear reading. Nonlinear reading, skimming across a screen or text as the eyes dart about the page, is fine for pleasure reading or for searching for key words, but insufficient for deep reading comprehension and absorbing meaning. It is critical that students' brains engage regularly in linear reading, because this type of reading leads to the ability to understand complex sentences, identify hidden meanings, interpret difficult syntax, develop a deep understanding of the story or content, and engage in sustained attention. In order for students to create elaborate neural networks for linear reading, they must practice these cognitive exercises repetitively over time. Have them engage in slow, deep reading from printed text on paper for 30-45 minutes per day.

Printed books bring more physicality to reading than digital texts. The brain thinks of a text as a physical landscape made up of physical objects called letters. Meaning is embedded in the structure of the text. Mental maps are created of the content and information we read. It is easy to remember that something happened half way down the left side of the page or that the name of the town was located in the top right corner of the page in the third chapter. These types of spatial and physical relationships are not represented the same way in digital texts.

Digital reading causes greater eye fatigue than paper reading. Prolonged reading on glossy screens can cause eyestrain, blurred vision and headaches. Recommend that students read from E-ink screens (like that of the new Kindle) over reading from a glossy computer screen or glossy iPad.

Scrolling through digital text impairs necessary cognitive processes needed for absorbing meaning and comprehending text. When students scroll through a passage, they use valuable mental resources to focus and refocus on information. If your students are reading from a digital text, have them choose the view option where two pages of the book can be seen at one time instead of a view that requires scrolling.

Mindset matters. Studies have shown that students do not bring as much mental effort or seriousness when reading from a screen as they do when reading from a paper text.

Have students with working memory and/or attention deficits read from paper instead of from digital texts. Since reading from digital text places a greater cognitive load on attention and working memory, it is better for students who struggle with these cognitive processes to read from paper so that more mental space is freed up to think about the content and less of a heavy load is placed on working memory.

Thanks to Dan, Kristin, Lester and Kimberly for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] .When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Anyone whose question is selected for this weekly column can choose one free book from a number of education publishers.
Just a reminder -- you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader... And,if you missed any of the highlights from the first four years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. They don't include ones from this current year, but you can find them by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar.
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Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog -- along with new material -- in an ebook form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Look for Part Two in a few days.....

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Response: Reading Digitally vs. Reading Paper

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This week's question is: Which is better for students -- reading paper or reading digitally? We were all supposed to live in a Star Trek world with all reading done electronically and paper books, including textbooks, an antiquated curiosity. How's that working out for us these days, and should it be a future we continue to strive for?

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I do a lot of speaking about technology trends in education, and none of my talks seem to get larger audiences than those that address new or emerging technologies. Part of this is our never ending...

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Editor's note: A set of book reviews by an outside contributor that previously appeared in this space has been removed because it did not meet Washington Post standards. The reviews were plagiarized from other publications.

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Editor's note: A set of book reviews by an outside contributor that previously appeared in this space has been removed because it did not meet Washington Post standards. The reviews were plagiarized from other publications.

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Students in the U.S. are being taught to focus only on becoming educated.

Brendan McDermid / Reuters

After visiting a Finnish kindergarten, I felt anxiety thinking of my hyper-stressed high-schoolers. The kindergarten classroom had little seating; in fact, we were told that there were never more than eight chairs in it at a time. Instead, there were pillows and small stools placed haphazardly around the room. A large, beautiful, wooden tree created a canopy over a cozy carpet in one corner. A nook in another corner provided a quiet space for students who wanted time to reflect by themselves. Musical instruments, books, and art supplies were readily available at eye level for little hands ready to grab them.

Related Story

The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland
As I observed this student-centered classroom created for independent learning and play, I wished it for my students; and even stronger still, I wished it for my own 1- and 3-year-old children. Because even though I am a public-school teacher who has an undying commitment to public education, I still worry about my own children entering school. I worry that years of driving toward academic achievement will morph them into tear-filled teenagers who have forgotten how to play. In fact, according to a separate Gallup survey, 79 percent of elementary-aged children feel engaged in school, while only 43 percent of high-schoolers do. This breaks my heart. Like Lauri Jarvilehto, I think learning matters more than education, and somewhere along the way, students in the U.S. are being taught to forget to learn and focus only on becoming educated. Even in Finland, many high-school students still find school boring, but Finland takes the issue of student boredom seriously. Recently, the country has begun a reform to rid high-schools of mandatory subjects altogether, leaning instead on "phenomenon-based" curriculum.

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Students in the U.S. are being taught to focus only on becoming educated. After visiting a Finnish kindergarten, I felt anxiety thinking of my hyper-stressed high-schoolers. The kindergarten classroom had little seating; in fact, we were told that there were never more than eight chairs in it at a time.

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For years, the American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) has adopted an on/off switch mentality when it comes to children and screen time. It used to recommend that children, ages two and under, have absolutely no exposure to screens. For older kids, the AAP recommended limiting 'screen time' to just two hours a day. Now, the guidelines have been changed so that they reflect a more nuanced approach.

It is about time. I suspect that most parents found it almost impossible to abide by the old guidelines. These days, there are monitors above the pumps at gas stations and always-on television in the electronics aisle at . Screen abstinence would pretty much be like sentencing a newborn to house arrest. And older kids, as any parent of a 10-year-old can tell you, will blow through their two hours before their Minecraft sessions even get going. Fortunately, the AAP finally realized it needed to keep up with the times.

Last month I wrote, "Parents Don't Need To Worry About 'Screen Time' Anymore." In that post, I argued:

Screens are now a ubiquitous part of our lives. It is a technology that has been completely integrated into the human experience. At this point, worrying about exposure to screens is like worrying about exposure to agriculture, indoor plumbing, the written word, or automobiles. For better or worse, the transition to screen based digital information technologies has already happened and now resistance is futile. The screen time rhetoric that accompanied the television-when this technology was still in its formative age-is no longer relevant.

The AAP now seems to agree. "In a world where 'screen time' is becoming simply 'time,'" the update reads, "our policies must evolve or become obsolete. The public needs to know that the Academy's advice is science-driven, not based merely on the precautionary principle." Of course, that's exactly what most experts in children and digital media previously thought, that the AAP guidelines seemed like they were the result of familiar technophobic paranoia that always accompanies new technologies.

In his excellent book Speed Limits: Where Time Went And Why We Have So Little Left, Mark C. Taylor reminds us that such a precautionary attitude always seems to accompany new innovations. "Like today's parents concerned about the psychological and physical effects of their kids playing video games, nineteenth-century physicians worried about the effect of people sitting in railway cars for hours watching the world rush by in a stream of images that seemed to be detached from real people and actual things." It seems there's something about the fast flicker of images that continuously terrifies us. My feed is, ironically, full of memes suggesting I put down my phone and "just slow down." Taylor agrees; his book is about the dangers of speed. He traces our historic relationship to the pace of technology. For example, he describes people's initial responses to the steam-engine: "some physicians went so far as to maintain that the experience of speed caused 'neurasthenia, neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, early tooth decay, and even premature baldness.'"

Speed, it seems, causes anxiety. Some of the time we're worried about going too fast. At other times, not fast enough. The AAP, in this instance, seems to believe it had trouble keeping pace. "Scientific research and policy statements lag behind the pace of digital innovation," the update reads. "Case in point: The 2011 AAP policy statement Media Use by Children Younger Than Two Years was drafted prior to the first generation iPad and explosion of apps aimed at young children." Certainly, these twelve new guidelines seem far more grounded in the current reality of digital life. But when it comes to innovation, technology, and human progress, even the scientific method can't provide the objectivity needed to escape the psychological burden of our paranoid default settings.

Here are the AAP's revised guidelines on children and screen time:

Media is just another environment. Children do the same things they have always done, only virtually. Like any environment, media can have positive and negative effects.

Parenting has not changed.The same parenting rules apply to your children's real and virtual environments. Play with them. Set limits; kids need and expect them. Teach kindness. Be involved. Know their friends and where they are going with them.

Role modeling is critical.Limit your own media use, and model online etiquette. Attentive parenting requires face time away from screens.

We learn from each other.Neuroscience research shows that very young children learn best via two-way communication. "Talk time" between caregiver and child remains critical for language development. Passive video presentations do not lead to language learning in infants and young toddlers. The more media engender live interactions, the more educational value they may hold (e.g., a toddler chatting by video with a parent who is traveling). Optimal educational media opportunities begin after age 2, when media may play a role in bridging the learning achievement gap.

Content matters.The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his time rather than just setting a timer.

Curation helps.More than 80,000 apps are labeled as educational, but little research validates their quality (Hirsh-Pasek KPsych Science2015;16:3-34 Google Scholar). An interactive product requires more than "pushing and swiping" to teach. Look to organizations like Common Sense Media (www.commonsensemedia.org) that review age-appropriate apps, games and programs.

Co-engagement counts.Family participation with media facilitates social interactions and learning. Play a video game with your kids. Your perspective influences how your children understand their media experience. For infants and toddlers, co-viewing is essential.

Playtime is important.Unstructured playtime stimulates creativity. Prioritize daily unplugged playtime, especially for the very young.

Set limits. Tech use, like all other activities, should have reasonable limits. Does your child's technology use help or hinder participation in other activities?

It's OK for your teen to be online.Online relationships are integral to adolescent development. Social media can support identity formation. Teach your teen appropriate behaviors that apply in both the real and online worlds. Ask teens to demonstrate what they are doing online to help you understand both content and context.

Create tech-free zones.Preserve family mealtime. Recharge devices overnight outside your child's bedroom. These actions encourage family time, healthier eating habits and healthier sleep.

Kids will be kids.Kids will make mistakes using media. These can be teachable moments if handled with empathy. Certain aberrations, however, such as sexting or posting self-harm images, signal a need to assess youths for other risk-taking behaviors.

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The American Academy Of Pediatrics Just Changed Their Guidelines On Kids And Screen Time

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For years, the American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) has adopted an on/off switch mentality when it comes to children and screen time. It used to recommend that children, ages two and under, have absolutely no exposure to screens. For older kids, the AAP recommended limiting 'screen time' to just two hours a day.

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Empowering Excellence in Learning and Teaching.

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from Diana Rendina

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All the Makerspace resources you could hope for (and more)

I first started learning about the Maker Movement in education and makerspaces in late 2013. Since then, I've been using this page to compile and curate some of the best articles, videos, blogs, books and other resources that have helped me along the way. My hope is that you will consider this a go-to resource as you progress along your own Maker journey. No matter whether you're just getting started with makerspaces or are looking to grow your program, there's something here for you.

What is the Maker Movement?

The Maker Movement has been around for a lot longer than many of us realize. Really, the desire to make things with our hands has existed since the dawn of humanity and DIY culture has long played an important role. Make Magazine has been around since 2005 and the first Maker Faire was held in 2006. Check out the articles below for a great take on what the Maker Movement means for education.

Colleen Grave's first started a makerspace at Lamar Middle School and then when on to pilot a makerspace at Ryan High School. She shares all about her experiences, projects her students are making and has gathered substantial resource lists as well. Her blog is seriously awesome. (Of course, I'm biased because we wrote a book together)

Laura Fleming's blog about her library and makerspace at New Milford High School. One of the pioneers of the school library makerspace movement, Laura has shared many amazing resources (and she has an awesome book too!)

Andy Plemmons' blog; in addition to being an all-around awesome librarian, Andy does an amazing job of bringing making into Barrow Elemenntary School. He collaborates with the University of Georgia and often brings the makerspace into his curriculum collaborations with teachers. He's also amazing at fundraising and creating big, school-wide projects.

Krissy runs an amazing makerspace called the Launch Pad at her elementary school, and she is an fantastic advocate for creativity. She also creates gorgeous posters (many with maker themes) that she makes freely available on her site and she founded the #elemaker hashtag. Did I mention that her job title is Innovation Coordinator?

Gwyneth Jones is an all around awesome librarian who shares resources relentlessly on her blog. She started a makerspace in her library recently and has taken a balanced approach, starting with a few affordable centers. She also makes amazing posters and graphics and offers them for FREE on her blog.

Robert Pronovost's blog about Ravenswood Elementary Makerspace. He's documented his space since he created it and offers some great advice on procedures. Definitely an excellent example of a successful elementary space.

Blog run by public librarians who work with young adults. The write about all things YA and have quite a few posts on makerspaces and maker programs.

Blog that focuses on libraries and artists working together. More of a public library and museum focus.

The people who started it all - there's amazing project inspiration and ideas on here, as well as lots of free resources.

Co-written by me, Colleen Graves and Aaron Graves, this book is packed full of lots of practical information and real-life examples of using design challenges in makerspaces. We cover everything from building a maker culture and setting up the physical space of your makerspace to organizing global collaborations and sharing your projects through Maker Fests. We go into detail about creating design challenge prompts that can inspire your makers. The book has sections specifically focused on elementary and secondary curriculum connections and we feature interviews with a ton of amazing maker educators at all grade levels.

Available from Amazon and other book sellers now!

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I first started learning about the Maker Movement in education and makerspaces in late 2013. Since then, I've been using this page to compile and curate some of the best articles, videos, blogs, books and other resources that have helped me along the way.

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What do you need to know about copyright?

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What do you need to know about copyright?

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From Common Sense Media

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Common Sense Education empowers students and educators with digital citizenship tools and teaching strategies to advance learning in the digital age.

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Visit my Amazon Author Page to get updated content and see where I'll be next 

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Visit my Amazon Author Page to get updated content and see where I'll be next 

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Visit Amazon.com's Kristin Ziemke Page and shop for all Kristin Ziemke books. Check out pictures, bibliography, and biography of Kristin Ziemke

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Read Kristin's post for Scholastic on the Art of Sneaky Reading

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Read Kristin's post for Scholastic on the Art of Sneaky Reading

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By Kristin Ziemke, guest blogger

I was a sneaky reader. I didn't have a name for it at the time, but that's what I was. I'd sneak a flashlight under my bed so I could read when I was supposed to be sleeping. I'd stash copies of Superfudge and The Babysitter's Club in my long outgrown playhouse, where I'd stop by to squeeze in a few minutes of reading when I was supposed to be walking the dog. I'd even hide books under the bathroom sink before going to bed so I could get up a few moments later, feign a stomachache, and spend some extra time with my favorite characters.

As a child, when I found a title that pulled on my heartstrings, I'd use every free moment I could find at school to get back into that book. Over the course of the day, those moments would add up to 15 or 20 additional minutes with text. As an educator, I recognize the impact sneaky reading had on my literacy development, as I now know those additional 20 minutes of daily independent reading provided me 1.8 million more words a year than my classmates who did not sneak extra reading minutes (Nagy and Herman, 1987). I am a good reader because I read a lot.

"The single greatest factor in reading achievement is volume."
Stephen Krashen,
The Power of Reading: Insights from Research, 2004

Today I worry that too many of our students are not spending extensive time in text they can and want to read. More and more kids are entering school reading below grade level. There's a lot of pressure on families and teachers to prepare them for the test du jour. And each year adds more stakeholders who want proof that students are learning. But the best way we can prepare learners for whatever lies ahead is to teach them how to be great readers.

At school, we provide each child explicit, personalized reading instruction. We build enthusiasm for reading and joyfully celebrate favorite titles, introduce topics that peak a child's interest, and support them in finding their next "homerun" book. We use new and innovative tools like TheKidShouldSeeThis.com to view short video clips that spark curiosity and high-quality websites like Wonderopolis as a way to leverage tech to bring kids to text they may want to read more about. But more than that, we model how to live like a reader in our classrooms and beyond.

"A classroom atmosphere that promotes reading does not come
from the furniture and its placement as much as it comes
from the teacher's expectation that students will read."
--Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer, 2009

And so, I explicitly instruct my students in the art of sneaky reading. Together we define what it means to be a sneaky reader and look for opportunities to practice our craft. Every morning, we sneak minutes with books as students turn in lunch money, unpack their bags, and settle in for the day. We leave morning work and bell-ringers behind and instead spend time with text. As we travel down the hall for bathroom break, our books go with us and we squeeze in a few more minutes of independent reading while we wait. Weekly, we snuggle in for Flashlight Friday and lose ourselves in stacks of our favorite series and authors. On the bus to field trips, waiting for lunch cleanup, and when our schedule unexpectedly changes, we read. This becomes a habit not only at school, but a habit for living.

This practice extends beyond the school day as kids advocate for their reading life wherever they might be. Whether in line at the grocery store or cozying up with a book to quiet down after a busy day, extending a child's time with text creates the conditions where thinking and learning never stop. We recognize that every minute counts, and as teachers, we effectively use the time we have with students and seek a way to steal time we don't have. We teach students to be sneaky readers so they can independently carve out time to nurture their reading lives.

Looking to foster sneaky reading? Here are a few simple ways to embrace this practice with your students:

Share moments when you lived like a sneaky reader as a child.

Model what it looks like when you can't put down a book! With book in hand, use language like, "Hold on...I need two more minutes..."

Document your life as a reader. Think book-selfies on the train or asking a friend to snap a photo of you in a non-traditional reading environment. Show kids when, where, and how to sneak additional reading minutes.

Talk about the why. Give kids the facts regarding time on text and reading development.

Flip your reading life! Embrace the power of video, and capture a teaching point or reading reflection wherever you are to show how living like a reader transcends all aspects of your life.

About Kristin:
A teacher of primary age learners in Chicago, Kristin Ziemke engages students in authentic learning experiences where reading, thinking, and collaboration are at the heart of the curriculum. Author of Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom, Kristin pairs best practice instruction with digital tools to transform learning in the classroom and beyond.

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By Kristin Ziemke, guest blogger I was a sneaky reader. I didn't have a name for it at the time, but that's what I was. I'd sneak a flashlight under my bed so I could read when I was supposed to be sleeping.

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Read Kristin's new article from the International Literacy Journal, Literacy Today

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Read Kristin's new article from the International Literacy Journal, Literacy Today

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Balancing Text and Tech!

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Subscribe to the Amplify Teaching podcast! 

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Subscribe to the Amplify Teaching podcast! 

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Listen to my Podcast on the Wired Educator with Kelly Croy

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Listen to my Podcast on the Wired Educator with Kelly Croy

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Order Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom

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Order Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom

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Whether you are in a 1:1 school, want to squeeze everything you can out of the one device in your classroom, or your school is encouraging you to use more

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Check out our new website AmplifyTeaching.com 

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Check out our new website AmplifyTeaching.com 

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This year, Amplify received EdReports' highest-possible "all-green" rating. "All-green" means that all elements of Amplify's ELA programs-Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) for grades K-5 and Amplify ELA for grades 6-8-meet the highest standards of alignment, rigor, and usability.

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Read this review of Amplify from Troy Hicks 

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Read this review of Amplify from Troy Hicks 

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For a number of years now, I have been wanting to provide elementary colleagues with a book that offers a glimpse inside a classroom that runs as a digital writing workshop, one that truly embraces the principles of writing workshop pedagogy while integrating digital writing tools into day-to-day literacy practices. I have been fortunate to connect with many elementary educators who embrace the writing workshop approach with digital writing tools, but hadn't yet seen a book that captured, in words and images, what a digital writing workshop might look like.

Then, last year, I found out that Katie Muhtaris and Kristin Ziemke were working on a book to be based on some of the techniques and strategies they share in their blog, " Innovate Ignite Inspire." Knowing that they were doing this kind of smart work with their kids, I have been eagerly awaiting their book. The result is Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom.

Now, having met Kristin quite some time ago at a Michigan Reading Association conference, I knew that she was an educator who was a bit skeptical about the use of technology, but wanted to integrate tech in productive, responsible ways. Or, as Stephanie Harvey describes it in the foreword of the book, though Katie had been enthusiastically integrating technology in her classroom for number of years and, subsequently, Kristin would "peek in, curious about how tech platforms might enhance learning in her first-grade classroom, but not entirely convinced" (vii).

Just as its title suggests, Katie and Kristin's book does not supersede or replace existing literacy practices with technology-enhanced lessons. Instead, their goal is, indeed, to amplify best practices in reading and writing workshop, modeling literacy practices for their students, and moving them toward a hybridity of reading and writing in both print and digital spaces. As they explain:

Digital learning is at a crossroads, and it's time for teachers and students to share our voices in how, why, and when our kids should use technology as a learning tool. We invite you to join us on a journey of discovery, exploration, and empowerment. (xii)

Their core principles are ones with which I, and countless other teachers, would certainly agree:

Use a workshop model for instruction

Hold small-group and individual conferences

Engage kids in cross-curricular content

Scaffold learning

Encourage collaboration and conversation

Drive instruction with assessment

These principles align with their overarching goal - "Technology in the classroom fits easily into this hands-on approach to learning (the writing workshop): our students should be the ones using it" (5).

They back these principles up with numerous examples, and I especially appreciate the way that they create "technology anchor charts" in much the same way they would when exploring a new genre, discussing reading strategies, or documenting a process. Also, they describe how they adapt the workshop model by adding in the element of "play" before a mini lesson. "Play," they contend, "is collaborative, experiential, tactile, and active," all ideas that lend themselves well to using technology (33).

The book itself takes the voice that we have come to expect in all Heinemann titles - respectful of teachers' time, knowledge, and needs for high-quality professional learning and growth. Rather than providing a buffet of tech tools, Katie and Kristin actually focus their efforts on just a few key tools and processes: capturing ideas with Padlet, engaging students in a backchannel with Today's Meet, teaching them how to record voice and video with a webcam and microphone. Throughout the book, there are suggestions that a teacher can "try tomorrow" with minimal technology knowledge.

As the book comes to a close, they share insights on reflection and assessment. Regardless of any number of digital tools at their disposal, Katie and Kristin remind us that

The simple act of giving ourselves permission to stop and watch opens our eyes to the rich fabric of learning in our classroom. We can examine the quality of the tasks we ask our students to undertake. What impact do they have? Why is this important? How can this be better? (90)

Amplify has provided elementary teachers a glimpse into the workings of what I would call a digital writing workshop and what Franki Sibberson has recently begun to call a " digital reading workshop" in Digital Reading: What's Essential in Grades 3-8. Though I am curious as to why Katie and Kristin do not use that language, I imagine that they avoid adding the "digital" label to the work that they do for good reason - to keep the focus on reading and writing, thinking and learning. As we all continue to think about ways in which we can purposefully bring technology into the K-6 classroom, Amplify provides us with both the principles and practices for doing so.

NOTE: While I am a Heinemann author and did request a complimentary copy of this book, please know I am writing this review independently, not at the request of Heinemann or the authors.

Update: 12/10/15, 11:33 PM - Katie was kind enough to point out that I transposed two letters in "Padlet," so that has been corrected.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Review of Amplify by Katie Muhtaris and Kristin Ziemke

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For a number of years now, I have been wanting to provide elementary colleagues with a book that offers a glimpse inside a classroom that runs as a digital writing workshop, one that truly embraces the principles of writing workshop pedagogy while integrating digital writing tools into day-to-day literacy practices.

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Enroll in my FREE iTunes U companion course to Amplify: Digital Pedagogy for Today and Tomorrow

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Enroll in my FREE iTunes U companion course to Amplify: Digital Pedagogy for Today and Tomorrow

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amplify! digital pedagogy for today and tomorrow

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Amplify! Digital Pedagogy for Today and Tomorrow - Free Course by Apple Distinguished Educators on iTunes U

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Amplify! Digital Pedagogy for Today and Tomorrow, Apple Distinguished Educators, Educational Technology, iTunes U, educational content, iTunes U

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Enroll in my new FREE iTunes U Course Literacy in Action: Create to Learn 

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Enroll in my new FREE iTunes U Course Literacy in Action: Create to Learn 

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Literacy in Action: Create To Learn - Free Course by Apple Distinguished Educators on iTunes U

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Literacy in Action: Create To Learn, Apple Distinguished Educators, Teaching & Learning, iTunes U, educational content, iTunes U

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New free iBook from @dgoble2001 Download Interview an Expert

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New free iBook from @dgoble2001 Download Interview an Expert

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Interview an Expert by Don Goble on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Interview an Expert by Don Goble. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Survey data on how tweens and teens are using media

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Survey data on how tweens and teens are using media

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Media Use by Tweens and Teens: Infographic | Common Sense Media

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Common Sense Media improves the lives of kids and families by providing independent reviews, age ratings, & other information about all types of media.

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Student Centered Science from @wesmolyneaux 

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Student Centered Science from @wesmolyneaux 

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student-created science animation: animation creator hd to enhance understanding

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Student-Created Science Animation: Animation Creator HD to Enhance Understanding by Wes Molyneaux on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Student-Created Science Animation: Animation Creator HD to Enhance Understanding by Wes Molyneaux. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Great stuff happening on @KovacsTeach new blog

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This week I got the chance to test out a maker plan I'd built to address 7th grade math standards in Emily Arens's class! It was a blast. We used Dash robots and the program Blockly, but any coding...

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When asked recently to name the one attribute CEOs will need most to succeed in the turbulent times ahead, Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell, Inc., replied, "I would place my bet on curiosity."

Dell was responding to a 2015 PwC survey of more than a thousand CEOs, a number of whom cited "curiosity" and "open-mindedness" as leadership traits that are becoming increasingly critical in challenging times. Another of the respondents, McCormick & Company CEO Alan D. Wilson, noted that business leaders who "are always expanding their perspective and what they know-and have that natural curiosity-are the people that are going to be successful."

Welcome to the era of the curious leader, where success may be less about having all the answers and more about wondering and questioning. As Dell noted, curiosity can inspire leaders to continually seek out the fresh ideas and approaches needed to keep pace with change and stay ahead of competitors.

A curious, inquisitive leader also can set an example that inspires creative thinking throughout the company, according to Hollywood producer Brian Grazer. "If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group," Grazer writes in his book, A Curious Mind. Grazer and others maintain that leading-by-curiosity can help generate more ideas from all areas of an organization, while also helping to raise employee engagement levels.

The notion that curiosity can be good for business is not entirely new, of course. Decades ago, Walt Disney declared that his company managed to keep innovating "because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." But having that desire to keep exploring "new paths" becomes even more important in today's fast-changing, innovation-driven marketplace.

In my own research for my book, A More Beautiful Question, I found numerous examples of current-day entrepreneurs and innovators-including Netflix's Reed Hastings, Square's Jack Dorsey, and the team behind Airbnb -who relied on curious inquiry as a starting point to reinventing entire industries. Dorsey, for example, was puzzled when an artist friend lost a big sale to a potential customer simply because the artist couldn't accept a credit card. Dorsey wondered why only established businesses, and not smaller entrepreneurs, were able to conduct credit card transactions; his search for an answer resulted in Square, a more accessible credit card reader.

While curiosity has ignited numerous startup ventures, it also plays an important role at more established companies, where leaders are having to contend with disruptive change in the marketplace. "These days, a leader's primary occupation must be to discover the future," Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich told me. It's "a continual search," Shaich says, requiring that today's leader keep exploring new ideas-including ideas from other industries or even from outside the business world.

Advising business leaders to "be more curious" sounds simple enough, but it may require a change in leadership style. In many cases, managers and top executives have risen through the ranks by providing fixes and solutions, not by asking questions. And once they've attained a position of leadership, they may feel the need to project confident expertise.

To acknowledge uncertainty by wondering aloud and asking deep questions carries a risk: the leader may be perceived as lacking knowledge. In their book The Innovator's DNA, authors Clayton Christensen, Hal Gregersen and Jeff Dyer observed that the curious, questioning leaders they studied seemed to overcome this risk because they had a rare blend of humility and confidence: They were humble enough to acknowledge to themselves that they didn't have all the answers, and confident enough to be able to admit that in front of everyone else.

While we may tend to think of curiosity as a hardwired personality trait-meaning, one either is blessed with "a curious mind" or not-according to Ian Leslie, author of the book , curiosity is actually "more of a state than a trait." We all have the potential to be curious, given the right conditions.

Leslie notes that curiosity seems to bubble up when we are exposed to new information and then find ourselves wanting to know more. Hence, the would-be curious leader should endeavor to get "out of the bubble" when possible; to seek out new influences, ideas, and experiences that may fire up the desire to learn more and dig deeper.

Even when operating within familiar confines, curious leaders tend to try to see things from a fresh perspective. The ones I studied in my research seemed to have a penchant for bringing a " beginner's mind " approach to old problems and stubborn challenges. They continually examined and re-examined their own assumptions and practices, asking deep, penetrating "Why" questions, as well as speculative "What if" and "How" questions.

Such leaders sometimes also evangelize about curiosity, urging people in their organizations to "Question Everything." This can serve to model the behavior for others, though leaders may have to go much further-providing sufficient freedom and incentives-in order to actually create the conditions for curiosity to flourish company-wide.

In the end, it isn't necessarily easy for a leader to foster curiosity on an individual or organizational level-but it may be well worth the effort. "With curiosity comes learning and new ideas," says Dell. "If you're not doing that, you're going to have a real problem."

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Why Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite

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When asked recently to name the one attribute CEOs will need most to succeed in the turbulent times ahead, Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell, Inc., replied, "I would place my bet on curiosity."

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Interest is at once a cognitive state and an affective state, what Silvia calls a "knowledge emotion." The feelings that characterize interest are overwhelmingly positive: a sense of being energized and invigorated, captivated and enthralled. As for its effects on cognition: interest effectively turbocharges our thinking. When we're interested in what we're learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features. When we're interested in a task, we work harder and persist longer, bringing more of our self-regulatory skills into play.

Interests powerfully influence our academic and professional choices. A seven-year-long study by Judith Harackiewicz of the University of Wisconsin and her colleagues found that college students' interest in an introductory psychology course taken their freshman year predicted how likely they were to enroll in additional psychology classes and to major in the subject. Interest predicted such outcomes even more accurately than students' grades in that initial course. In general, writes Harackiewicz, "research has found that interest is a more powerful predictor of future choices than prior achievement or demographic variables."

In fact, scientists have shown that passionate interests can even allow people to overcome academic difficulties or perceptual disabilities. One study found that students who scored poorly on achievement tests but had well-developed interests in reading or mathematics were more likely to engage with the meaning of textual passages or math problems than were peers with high scores but no such interests. Another study, of prominent academics and Nobel Laureates who struggled with dyslexia, found that they were able to persist in their efforts to read because they were motivated to explore an early and ardent interest.
How To Promote Interest
So what can parents, teachers and leaders do to promote interest? The great educator John Dewey wrote that interest operates by a process of "catch" and "hold"-first the individual's interest must be captured, and then it must be maintained. The approach required to catch a person's interest is different from the one that's necessary to hold a person's interest: catching is all about seizing the attention and stimulating the imagination. Parents and educators can do this by exposing students to a wide variety of topics. It is true that different people find different things interesting-one reason to provide learners with a range of subject matter, in the hope that something will resonate.

"Research has found that interest is a more powerful predictor of future choices than prior achievement or demographic variables."

But it is also the case that interesting things generally share a number of characteristics. The research of Paul Silvia suggests that to be interesting, material must be novel, complex, and comprehensible. That means introducing ourselves or others to things we haven't encountered before (or novel aspects of familiar things), and calibrating their complexity so that these things are neither too hard nor too easy to understand. Understandability is crucial: as Silvia writes, new and complex things are interesting "provided that people feel able to comprehend them and master the challenges that they pose."

Research shows, for example, that an inscrutable poem is judged as more interesting when readers are given a hint that allows them to make sense of what it's about. Abstract art, too, is considered to be more interesting when the paintings are given titles that help viewers understand what the artists may have had in mind as they painted. Viewers become even more interested in such paintings when they are given biographical information about the artist and background about the historical context in which it was created.
Starting A Virtuous Cycle
What counts as novel, complex, and comprehensible, of course, depends on the age and ability of the individual. One way that parents and educators can ensure that things are both complex and comprehensible is to make sure that students have sufficient background knowledge to stimulate interest and avoid confusion. The more we know about a domain, the more interesting it gets. Silvia suggests that one reason that growing knowledge leads to growing interest is that new information increases the likelihood of conflict -of coming across a fact or idea that doesn't fit with what we know already. We feel motivated to resolve this conflict, and we do so by learning more. A virtuous cycle is thus initiated: more learning leads to more questions, which in turn leads to more learning. Parents and educators can encourage the development of students' interests by actively eliciting these queries, what researchers call "curiosity questions."

If curiosity doesn't seem to be emerging on its own, there are ways to coax it out, as George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote in a classic paper, "The Psychology of Curiosity." Curiosity arises, Loewenstein wrote, "when attention becomes focused on a gap in one's knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling of deprivation."
[RELATED: For Students, Why the Question Is More Important Than the Answer]
The simplest way to open an information gap is to start with the question. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes that teachers and parents are often "so eager to get to the answer that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question." Yet it's the question that stimulates curiosity; being told an answer quells curiosity before it can even get going. Instead of starting with the answer, begin by posing a genuinely interesting question-one that opens an information gap.

Parents and educators can also promote the development of kids' interests by demonstrating their own passion for particular subjects. A study of 257 professional musicians, for example, found that most important characteristics of the musicians' first teachers (and, of course, parents are often kids' first teachers) was the ability to communicate well-to be friendly, chatty, and encouraging-and the ability to pass on their own love of music, through modeling and playing well. Try sharing your own personal interests with young people through casual conversations, hands-on demonstrations, and special trips.
Keeping Interest Alive
If catching people's interest is about seizing attention and providing stimulation, holding it is about finding deeper meaning and purpose in the exercise of interest. Caution is required here, however. Research has found that infusing a subject with meaning by stressing its future utility can produce the opposite of its intended effect. In one study, for example, Judith Harackiewicz and her coauthor informed students that math would be important in their adult lives. The intervention actually undermined interest in math among students who did not consider themselves skilled in the subject, making such students feel threatened and leading them to withdraw.

Harackiewicz and other researchers have found more success when they encourage students to generate their own connections and discover for themselves the relevance of academic subject matter to their lives. In a 2010 study, for example, Harackiewicz and her colleagues had college students engage in a writing exercise in which they were asked to think about the how math (and in an accompanying experiment, psychology) might play a role in their lives. In the math-related intervention, for example, participants were first taught a mathematical procedure and then asked to write a short enin, one to three paragraphs in length, briefly describing the potential relevance of the technique to their own lives, or to the lives of college students in general.

Completing this exercise led subjects to become more interested in the subjects they wrote about, an effect that was strongest among those participants who initially reported that they did not do well and did not feel competent in math or psychology. Harackiewicz calls this a "value intervention," because it helps students see the value of what they're learning. As employed by parents, this doesn't have to be a formal exercise; it can be something you do in casual conversations. When you ask, on the car ride home or around the dinner table, "What did you learn about in school today?", you can follow up with a question like "How do you think people might use that knowledge in their jobs?" or "What could that skill help you do?"

Parents, educators and managers can also promote the development of individuals' interests by supporting their feelings of competence and self-efficacy, helping them to sustain their attention and motivation when they encounter challenging or confusing material. Weaker learners may need more of this assistance to find and maintain their interests, while stronger learners can be pushed in the direction of increasing autonomy and self-direction. The goal in each case is to cultivate interests that provide us with lasting intellectual stimulation and fulfillment, interests that we pursue over a lifetime with vigor and zest.

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How the Power of Interest Drives Learning

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Interest is at once a cognitive state and an affective state, what Silvia calls a "knowledge emotion." The feelings that characterize interest are overwhelmingly positive: a sense of being energized and invigorated, captivated and enthralled. As for its effects on cognition: interest effectively turbocharges our thinking.

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Text vs Tech? We still need time to know...

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Text vs Tech? We still need time to know...

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"You can also flip back and forth very easily, and spatially, there are advantages to print media."

One of the best ways for readers to show engagement with the text, he said, is through marginal annotations.

"There are real advantages to print," he said. "You can write on the text right there," noting that if students aren't allowed to write in textbooks, they can use small sticky notes that come off easily. "You can also flip back and forth very easily, and spatially, there are advantages to print media."

Making those annotations in digital readers, like iPads and Chromebooks, can be more challenging than grabbing a pencil and sticky note.

When Pennington's seventh graders took the Smarter Balanced Assessment in English Language Arts on new Chromebooks last April, Pennington didn't teach them how to use the test's annotation feature. Students would have been able to highlight reading passages and take notes on the text to help them answer test questions. He thought it was too complicated for them to learn how to use well in time for the test.

"It was so cumbersome," he said. Students had to turn on the annotation feature, move back and forth between screens, remember the location of the notes, and then return to the questions they were trying to answer. He said for most of his students, it would have been tricky to "walk and chew gum at the same time," so he shelved it.

DRAWBACKS OF DEVICES...FOR NOW

While ever more schools adopt textbooks and student reading materials to digital readers like iPads and Chromebooks, some recent research suggests students may comprehend more from reading print. Middle school students who read from both print and e-books showed they understood more of what they read from the ink-and-paper books, according to one preliminary study presented by Heather Ruetschlin Schugar and Jordan T. Schugar of West Chester University.

Although tablets and touch devices allow readers to interact in innovative ways, the researchers wrote, "Reading comprehension research with multi-touch devices is still in its infancy and students will need to adapt new reading strategies in order to maximize their learning in this environment."

The Schugars have conducted two additional studies in which grade school students better understood material when not distracted by the bells and whistles of an interactive digital book. Annie Murphy Paul, in writing about the Schugars' work for the New York Times, wrote, "It seems that the very 'richness' of the multimedia environment that e-books provide - heralded as their advantage over printed books - may overwhelm children's limited working memory, leading them to lose the thread of the narrative or to process the meaning of the story less deeply."

For older students, the ability to take notes easily appears to be a big reason for choosing print textbooks over digital. In a Hewlett Packard online survey of 527 college students at San Jose State University, 57 percent of students who responded said they preferred print materials to e-books when studying. When citing reasons for their preference, 35 percent of print users cited "note-taking ability" as a reason for preferring print vs. six percent of those who favored e-books.

Yet those who study reading seem to understand that comprehending in the new medium may require some new training and practice to receive the full benefits. In a recent New Yorker article, Being a Better Online Reader, Maryanne Wolf, author of a history of reading called Proust and the Squid, said she's developing digital apps to help train students to deep read digitally. She cites a new study that showed fifth-graders became better digital readers after learning how to use the digital annotation feature.

"The same plasticity that allows us to form a reading circuit to begin with, and short-circuit the development of deep reading if we allow it, allows us to learn how to duplicate deep reading in a new environment," Wolf said in the article.
TEACHING NEW SKILLS
Maybe new note-taking skills require nothing more than a shift in perspective. In a recent MindShift article about a one-to-one iPad program, Hillview Middle Principal Erik Burmeister, said that annotating digital books gives his students a sense of freedom - a place to "dirty up" their materials with thoughts and ideas.

"In a traditional school environment, you're given a textbook and told not to write in it at all. And this is really counter-intuitive to what we want kids to be able to do in the real world," he said. "We want them to write all over the things that they're reading." Since allowing every kid to write on paper books would mean throwing away those books at the end of every year, the devices give kids the chance to annotate inside the document.

"It"s being able to engaged with the material in a really kinesthetic way," Burmeister said. "The material is so sacred that it's not sacred, you can really dirty it up."

So if engaged readers annotate, and students may or may not prefer taking notes in print books, what's next for the e-book? Where does it fit into school? What's the best use of an e-book for learning? More research will need to be done, especially on how students use the annotation features of e-books, to get a clearer picture of how well students can take notes and be able to find them on digital readers. Perhaps technology will improve, and annotation features will become more intuitive in the next generation of devices. And maybe parents and teachers will need to distinguish reading for fun on tablets, with the distracting bells and whistles, from reading for school, where material is less interactive but more straightforward for better absorption.

Mark Pennington believes that there will always be room for both print and digital reading in school. In the mean time, he will continue teaching kids how to annotate, because giving students the "ability to talk to the text, to create an internal dialogue with the text," is the best way to help students understand what they're reading. Whether that ends up being most effective tapped on a tablet or scribbled in the margins remains to be seen.

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Can Students 'Go Deep' With Digital Reading?

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"You can also flip back and forth very easily, and spatially, there are advantages to print media." One of the best ways for readers to show engagement with the text, he said, is through marginal annotations. "There are real advantages to print," he said.

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I'm blogging from the International Literacy Association conference today! I always love a great meeting of the minds. Yesterday Kristin and I presented on Building Literacy Communities in the classroom. It was a fun session filled with great energy and an amazing twitter stream thanks to all of the connected educators!

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Available October, 2015.

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Whether you are in a 1:1 school, want to squeeze everything you can out of the one device in your classroom, or your school is encouraging you to use more

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By Kentaro Toyama

Technology is not the answer.

That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development. I was the co-founder and assistant director of Microsoft Research India, a Bangalore computer-science lab, where one of our objectives was to research ways in which information and communication technologies could support the socio-economic development of poor communities, both rural and urban. (By the way, I'm grateful to Jim Fallows for the opportunity to guest post! It was in Bangalore that I met Jim, thanks to an introduction through a good mutual friend, The Atlantic's deputy editor Scott Stossel.)

In one of our early projects, we worked with a rural sugarcane cooperative a few hours outside of Mumbai. They had a network of village personal computers that allowed the cooperative to report sales results to farmers. To reduce costs, we experimented with a mobile-phone-based system that replaced some of the PCs. Our system was faster, cheaper and better liked by farmers, but when it came time to expand the pilot, we were stymied by internal political dysfunction at the cooperative.

The second class of feedback went in the other direction: It nudged me to generalize beyond the developing world and beyond electronic technology. Let's consider, for example, poverty and technology in the United States. The rate of poverty in America decreased until about 1970, but it has since held steady at an embarrassingly high 13-14% only to rise in the recent recession. Since 1970, we've also had a boom in digital technologies from the PC to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook. If these technologies are solving social ills as social-media cheerleaders would have us believe, then we'd hope at the very least that in the golden age of innovation in the world's most technically advanced country, all this technology would have put some dent in poverty.

It hasn't. And, the theory of technology-as-amplifier explains why: As a society, we haven't been so intent on eradicating poverty, as much as perhaps, on ever cleverer ways to guide us to the nearest cup of coffee. The technology is incredible, but our intent is not there.

It's not just electronic technologies that we place undue faith in. We also expect too much from other technologies, institutions, policies and systems, or "TIPS" to coin an acronym. Like the tips of icebergs, TIPS are the most visible part of cultural change and public policy, but they are dependent on the much more significant, if invisible, bulk of individual and societal intent and capacity. Current events are constant reminders of this.

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By Kentaro Toyama Technology is not the answer. That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development.

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Questions to guide thinking.

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Wordless News | One headline per day, vowel and consonant free.

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One headline per day, vowel and consonant free.

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astronomy picture of the day dated archive listing

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Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS): Critical Thinking and Inclusive Discussion

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VTS is an education nonprofit providing schools and museums with curriculum, professional development, and training in critical thinking skills.

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Yellowstone Bear Image | National Geographic Photo of the Day

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A brown bear in Yellowstone National Park inspects a car full of tourists in this National Geographic Photo of the Day.

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Yes, and...Thoughts on Print versus Digital Reading 

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Yes, and...Thoughts on Print versus Digital Reading 

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By Kristin Ziemke

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Purchase Kristin's book Connecting Comprehension & Technology here

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Purchase Kristin's book Connecting Comprehension & Technology here

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When we begin our technology journey by grounding it in time tested comprehension instruction, we ensure that our use of technology is meaningful and authentic.

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Free video archives of #TheEdCollabGathering including 13, 1 hour sessions of professional development

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iTunes U Reading Course created by 5th graders! From @katharinehhale

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iTunes U Reading Course created by 5th graders! From @katharinehhale

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An iTunesU Reading Course Created by Fifth Graders!

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In our last wonderful coaching visit with Jennifer Kean from TCRWP, an observation assessment revealed that our readers lacked self-awareness of setting and achieving personal reading goals. I decided to ramp up/spice up our upcoming nonfiction unit of study by letting students pave their own path for their reading unit.

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Six Word Story: Enhancing Writing through Multimedia free iBook from @dgoble2001

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Six Word Story: Enhancing Writing through Multimedia free iBook from @dgoble2001

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six unique shots: enhancing writing through multimedia

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Six-Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia by Don Goble on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Six-Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia by Don Goble. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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If Shakespeare Could Tweet free iBook from @MrReiff

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If Shakespeare Could Tweet free iBook from @MrReiff

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if shakespeare could tweet: transforming literature with ios

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If Shakespeare Could Tweet: Transforming Literature with iOS by Lawrence Reiff on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy If Shakespeare Could Tweet: Transforming Literature with iOS by Lawrence Reiff. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Katie and I have launched a new blog! Innovateigniteinspire.wordpress.com/

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Download my iTunes U course Inquiry in Action: Africa

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Download my iTunes U course Inquiry in Action: Africa

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Inquiry in Action: Africa - Free Course by Apple Distinguished Educators on iTunes U

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Inquiry in Action: Africa, Apple Distinguished Educators, Writing & Literature, iTunes U, educational content, iTunes U

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Donalyn Miller's Blog on Reading Research 

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Donalyn Miller's Blog on Reading Research 

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It is still 80 degrees in Texas, but summer is over. Hay bails dot fields beside the road. It's chilly in the mornings. Time to start carrying a jacket. Five months of gray skies and brown grass ahead. I don't enjoy fall and winter weather, but I understand its value. The world can't grow all of the time. A fallow field rests to restore its nutrients and prevent exhaustion. Mother Nature needs a break.

Our reading and writing lives cycle through productive and restive periods, too. We scribble notes and start drafts that don't go anywhere. We linger in our last book-unready to leave it behind. Reading and writing help us understand and navigate our lives, but readers and writers need time to experience reading and writing without producing all of the time. The connection between our literacy and our lives travels between periods of growth, harvest, and dormancy. We must learn to appreciate and navigate these stages if we are to remain readers and writers throughout our lives.

I take breaks from reading, but they don't last long. If I go without picking up a book for a few days, my bookshelves Siren call me back to them. My mind splinters when I don't read and I feel it. I'm off-kilter and out of sorts. I don't always finish the books I start, though. I dip into parts and fall back out for long stretches. I have several books on pause at the moment. Some books blind me to all others. Some books take longer to warm my interest.

I go longer periods not writing. My blog goes dormant. I lose my notebook for a few days and don't miss it. I beat myself up about not writing, but Don doesn't think I should, "You're always mulling over ideas, reading articles, talking with your friends. You're always writing. You're just not always writing it down." He's right. Being a writer has a lot to do with looking at the world as a writer. Writing demands observing. Writing demands time to think. Writing demands time to wallow.

We don't commit to reading and writing once in our lives. We recommit to reading and writing again and again. We travel between seasons of dedication and neglect. Seasons of interest and apathy. Seasons of high productivity and low. We wander through fallow seasons and benefit long term from the rest. When reading and writing call to us again, we return.

In my early years of teaching, I failed to recognize my students' needs to linger in books they loved, to pause between books, to go days without reading much. I didn't reflect on my students' need to percolate ideas, to revisit their writing, or to write without finishing anything. I do these things. A lot of readers and writers do. Some readers and writers need incubation. We need reflection. It makes our reading and writing better in the end.

Prescribed charts defining THE writing process crowd out the necessity for every writer (and reader) to find a process that works for them. There's no lock step progression through a reading and writing life. We amble and wander and stop in various stages, as needed. We each must find our own way.

When we limit young readers and writers time to think about what they read and write, time to reflect on their reading and writing experiences, time to plan for future reading and writing, or permission to step away from reading and writing at times, we miss opportunities to model and teach our students strategies that enrich their literate lives and help them find their way back into reading and writing again when they stray.

Not all who wander are lost.

Examining the seasons of our own reading and writing lives provides insights that improve our ability to mentor young readers and writers. How do we see ourselves as readers and writers? Are there temporary or long term obstacles limiting our reading and writing lives? If so, what are we going to do about it? Which books lure us into reading binges and which books take dedication on our part? How do we handle these reading experiences differently? What do we do when our writing is stuck? How do we unstick it? How do we maintain and sustain a reading and writing life? We must give ourselves grace when we read and write less. Embrace time to dawdle and wallow, and value our students' need to do the same.

Writers write. Readers read. We cannot wear these identities unless we actively read and write. That's true. But writing and reading aren't solely productive acts, they're creative acts that require feeding to flourish and bloom. Readers who push from book to book leave themselves little room to savor a book's meaning. Writers pressured to write on demand at all times miss opportunities to follow threads to where they lead. To every thing there is a season. Writing and reading have seasons, too.

Without this time, it's difficult to find personal relevance in our reading and writing lives. If we want reading and writing to matter to our students, we must value the non-productive aspects of reading and writing that foster long term ownership and growth. We must recognize the difference between resting and floundering-providing encouragement and gentle pressure when required and backing off when necessary.

Fields in constant production deplete their resources and lose the ability to sustain life, but fallow fields lead to rich harvests in the end.

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It is still 80 degrees in Texas, but summer is over. Hay bails dot fields beside the road. It's chilly in the mornings. Time to start carrying a jacket. Five months of gray skies and brown grass ahead. I don't enjoy fall and winter weather, but I understand its value.

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It's the most wonderful time of the year! Okay, it's not Christmas, but if you're a royal fanatic, you've had May 19 circled on your calendar for a long time. Learn more about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

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Chat's listed by topic curated by @Cybraryman

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EDU Chats on Twitter Education Chats On Twitter Click For FULL CALENDAR: bit.ly/educhatcalendar Compiled by @thomascmurray, @cevans5095, @cybraryman1, @conniehamilton, @jrochelle DAY,REPEAT,#HASHTAG,DESCRIPTI...

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Join @MrsWideen's blogging community.

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The Primary Blogging Community is currently accepting classes that blog for the September rotation. The last rotation was a huge success with over 80 classes participating from all over the world. I have made a few changes for this rotation. I have changed the rotation schedule from 8 weeks to 5 weeks. I've done this because I feel that the most important part of this community is to have students commenting on each others blogs to generate excitement to write! Instead of taking 4 weeks to read and comment on the class blog, I have shortened it to 1 week. Here is a brief description of what the blogging community is:

The PBC is a community of primary teachers that want to share their students' learning via their classroom blog and their students' personal blogs. Classrooms will be grouped with 3 or 4 other classrooms from around the globe. The program is 5 weeks long. The first week will concentrate on the classroom blogs only. During this week, you will visit the other classes class blog. This is a chance for the other classes to see what is happening in your school and class, to discover where in the world you are located and to learn about how to write a good blog post and to watch how you model and work together to write a good comment. After the first week, we switch the focus from your classroom blog and concentrate on student blogs. The second week, one class will will be the focus class with the other 3 classes commenting on the first class' individual blogs. The cycle continues for 3 more weeks. The focus is solely on your student's individual blogs.

Why join the Primary Blogging Community?

1. You will be collaborating with other like minded educators on this project and in return will build your PLN.

2. PBC creates enthusiasm in reading and writing.

3. It gives your students a voice and lets them be the teacher to their peers.

4. Your students will have a built in audience that will provide authentic feedback to what they are writing about on their blogs.
5. On some days in the last rotation, my students had over 100 comments on their blogs! The excitement and engagement piece to this blogging community is huge!

What is the difference between the Primary Blogging Community and Quadblogging?

Quadblogging - Each week one blog is the focus blog with the other three blogs visiting and commenting during that week. In week two, another school/class blog is the focus with the other three visiting and commenting. This is repeated until each of the classes/schools has had their week in the spotlight. The cycle is then repeated. (from http://quadblogging.net)

Primary Blogging Community - Is the exact same as above except we concentrate on your student's personal blogs, not your classroom blog.

What do I need to have to begin?

You need to have a classroom blog and your students need their own personal blogs. If you do not have an edmodo account, I highly suggest you sign up for one and join our blogging community. This is where you can ask questions and collaborate with the other teachers in the group. The link for our group is here. The code to our group is 2n9zci. We also communicate frequently on twitter, use #PrimaryBC on twitter and follow me on twitter for news and updates @mrswideen.

Please fill in the google doc here.

When do we begin?

I will be closing registration September 15 and we will begin September 22nd.

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Registration is Open for The Primary Blogging Community September Session

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The Primary Blogging Community is currently accepting classes that blog for the September rotation. The last rotation was a huge success with over 80 classes participating from all over the world. I have made a few changes for this rotation. I have changed the rotation schedule from 8 weeks to 5 weeks.

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Creating and Composing in a Digital Writing Workshop

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Creating and Composing in a Digital Writing Workshop

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Here's a link to the blog I co-authored with Troy Hicks on the digital writing workshop.

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Creating and Composing in a Digital Writing Workshop

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Note: This post, co-authored by Troy Hicks and Kristin Ziemke, has been prepared in response to Nancie Atwell's blog post about the role of technology in her classroom. In her recent blog post Nancie Atwell opens up about the role of technology in her classroom. As a leader in our field of teaching writing, Nancie,...

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Here is an archive of the #Engchat I moderated on Curiosity and Wonder as Habits for Living

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November 2014 #WonderChat w/ Kristin Ziemke (with images, tweets) · Wonderopolis

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Curiosity and Wonder as Habits for Living

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Here's a list of people I named in my presentation who inspire me regularly.

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Thinking about this article on social media lately

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Thinking about this article on social media lately

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Editor's note: About once a month, the NewsHour's editorial staff huddles in our conference room to brainstorm ideas for "theme weeks" where we explore a single topic from all different - and sometimes surprising - angles. The idea for an off-the-grid week came up. Stories about energy, geography and even fine arts were pitched. We also talked about the social media "grid" and asked, how long do we keep our children off the grid and is there value in young people engaging with social tools from Instagram to iPad apps? For the latter we turned to two teachers who have competing views about allowing social media in their classrooms. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Yes: Bring social media to all classrooms
I have found the quietest students in my class speak the loudest on social media.
One day, Nadia, a very quiet and reserved student, walked into class and said, "Mr. Goble, guess what?"

"What?" I asked.

"I received a comment on my blog from a person in Australia," she said. "You're right! What we produce does extend beyond the walls of our classroom!"

At Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri, my broadcast technology, multimedia and film class uses Facebook, Twitter and student blogs with support from our school administrators and parents. The No. 1 reason for that support is trust. Our school leaders trust that my students and I are making the right choices. I treat my students as professionals and hold them to high expectations. In return, they are motivated, engaged and ultimately hold themselves to high standards.

I have worked hard the past ten years to help students become media-literate, which I believe is essential to a 21st century learner. I believe these skills will also make a positive impact on the Common Core State Standards for all of our students.

Think about it: would you give the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a 13-year-old with no driving lessons and say, have fun? This is essentially what we are doing with social media.Building a digital legacy is an issue that doesn't garner enough attention in our personal and professional lives. Some of the heaviest users of online tools and social media are our young students, who are growing up as a generation of visual learners and visual-attention seekers. This is, in fact, the YouTube generation, and the reality is that many teens are unconcerned about the dangers of sharing personal information online.

Students communicate, research, collaborate, create and publish online with or without the help of parents or educators. These same students then hop on social media to promote, discuss and share their thoughts with the world. The digital environment is offering us some of the greatest learning opportunities that young learners have ever had.

Yet in most cases, students are not learning social media skills. Think about it: would you give the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a 13-year-old with no driving lessons and say, have fun? This is essentially what we are doing with social media.

Social media has become one of the greatest educational tools of all time, and yet, it goes untaught. Why? Fear of the unknown? Lack of value? The time is now for education to instead embrace this form of learning and begin, even in small ways, embedding social media lessons in all classrooms.
Don Goble teaches Broadcast Technology, Film and Multimedia at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Goble was a part of the 2011 Apple Distinguished Educator class and speaks nationally on incorporating digital media into the classroom. No: Keep social media social
Are we jumping on the social media bandwagon "just because" or are the benefits clear and worth it? My conclusion is the former.

I think it was some time around my third year of teaching when I first heard of Facebook, a website to which my students were supposedly "addicted." I opened up an account with no intention of actually using it. What I discovered truly surprised me - I could reconnect with long lost camp friends, sneak a peek at ex-boyfriends and get annoyed with acquaintances who post antagonistic politics. Regardless, I forgot all about my students.

Facebook has become one huge "All About Me" project, and it has turned us all into self-absorbed eighth graders.Since that time, the number and choices of social media platforms has continued to grow, and each year, we teachers debate the benefits and trade-offs of trying to incorporate them into education.

I have tried to consider the positives to teaching social media. We can teach students how to discriminate "quality" shares versus irresponsible ones. (Do you vet what you read on the internet or just repeat misinformation?) We can teach them that sometimes writing less is more; conveying an idea with fewer words can be a valuable skill too.

But I've never gone much past dabbling. This kind of engagement might carry negative consequences, and at best, has dubious value.

The main reason I'd like to try to avoid social media use is a moral one. Kids today are addicted to technology; school can, and should, remain the one safe haven where they can unplug and just be present. Do we really want to give them another reason to be "connected?"

Students want to use social media for socializing, not as an extended classroom. Social media (more specifically, chatting on a cell phone via text or Twitter) is preventing our students from being socially aware of anything beyond themselves or their immediate social circle. A bored teenager no longer has to listen to adult conversation in the car, at the dinner table or on the living room TV, and so they pick up on absolutely nothing that's not already familiar and of interest to them. Social media is not expanding their social circle or worldview, it's limiting it. One student admitted to me, "I'm afraid we're going to grow up and realize we've wasted so much time."

I am also being told by students that using social media in education is a ship that has sailed. Students have told me they're already bored with teachers trying to create discussion forums. Other teachers have told me that students are actually participating less than they did a few years ago. And instead of encouraging them to share their thoughts, maybe we should be teaching them that no, they don't have to share every thought.

Young people have a tendency to want to be "heard," even if they are uninterested in what others have to say. My eighth graders can't wait to get up and present their beginning-of-year "All About Me" projects, seemingly unable to recognize that if they don't want to listen to others presenting, what makes them think anyone else wants to listen to them? Most social media sites merely perpetuate this phenomenon and are creating a whole generation of adults who sadly do the same. Facebook has become one huge "All About Me" project, and it has turned us all into self-absorbed eighth graders.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. But I think we should keep social media where it belongs: in the realm of that which is social. While I continue to keep up with friends on Facebook, my teenage students will continue to hang out with their friends on the medium of their choosing.

For now, I'll just see them in class. And when they claim to be "present," I'll hope they really mean it.
Gail Leicht teaches eighth grade Language Arts/Literature and has authored several city guide books. PBS NewsHour education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Should teachers be using social media in the classroom?

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Editor's note: About once a month, the NewsHour's editorial staff huddles in our conference room to brainstorm ideas for "theme weeks" where we explore a single topic from all different - and sometimes surprising - angles. The idea for an off-the-grid week came up. Stories about energy, geography and even fine arts were pitched.

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Listen to my Talks with Teachers podcast

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Listen to my Talks with Teachers podcast

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Apple Distinguished Educator, Chicago's Tech Innovator of the Year

Elementary Teacher

Segment I - Background and Inspiration

Tell your story. Where are you from and how long have you been teaching? What classes have you taught? - This is her 14th year in education. She is currently a first-grade teacher and Technology Integrationist. She has fallen in love with urban education as is passionate about helping all students reach their potential.

Who has helped you in your journey to become a master teacher? - Both of her parents are teachers. SHe comes from a teaching family, thus her first courses in education came at the dinner table. She also is thankful for the help that Stephanie Harvey and Smokey Daniels provided over the years.

It is important for other teachers to know that we all have had setbacks in the classroom. Identify an instance in which you struggled as a teacher and explain what you learned from that experience. - Many lessons fell flat, but as she evolved as an educator, Kristin saw those experiences as opportunities. Once she was trying to get her first-grade students to use Edmodo, the wi-fi went down at school. She remembers sweating in that moment, trying to give support to as many students as she could. Instead, she transitioned to annotations on sticky notes.

What is the challenge in teaching on the elementary level? - The biggest challenge is that you are teaching the whole child at that moment. It is not about teaching the subject, it is nurturing their academic, social, emotional needs. It is also setting the tone for all future learning. So much time is spent developing a vision of who students are as readers, writers, and thinker.

What is one thing that you love about the classroom? - Kristin loves the struggle of meeting the many needs of students. That makes it so rewarding. She also loves developing a community of learners, shifting their mindset, making them realize that there is not just one teacher in the room, there are 34.

What book do you recommend to a teacher that wants to develop?

What is one thing a teacher can do outside the classroom that can pay off inside the classroom? - Make connections that really matter. Her best advice to any educator is to build a network - develop a personal PLN. Conferences are also a great place to meet people.

Is there an internet resource that you can recommend which will help teachers grow professionally? - The internet can be like drinking from a fire hose. There are a number of different blogs that she reads like:

Provide a writing practice that is effective? - Give them consistent, sustain opportunities to write. Find the chunks of time to make writing meaningful.

Update the cannon. What books belongs in the 1st grade classroom?

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Teaching the Whole Child with Kristin Ziemke (Apple Distinguished Educator) - Talks with Teachers

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Apple Distinguished Educator, Chicago's Tech Innovator of the Year Elementary Teacher Segment I - Background and Inspiration Tell your story. Where are you from and how long have you been teaching? What classes have you taught? - This is her 14th year in education.

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National Geographic: Stories of Animals, Nature, and Culture

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Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

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Here are some great sites for digital informational text.

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Here are some great sites for digital informational text.

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Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner is now available in the iBook store.

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digital discourse in mathematics: strategies for the young learner

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Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner by Kristin Ziemke on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner by Kristin Ziemke. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Here is an archive of the #Engchat I moderated on Amplifying Student Thinking in a Digital Age

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Access Google Drive with a Google account (for personal use) or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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Drawing Pad

Book Creator

iMovie

Explain Everything

Kidblog

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Here is a resource guide for Kidblog.org

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Check out Franki Sibberson's blog about Padlet!

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I'm participating in a Heinemann webinar series that Kristin Ziemke is doing . She is my new favorite person and I've learned so much from her over the last few weeks. Her classroom is amazing and she embed technology in thoughtful and authentic ways.

One thing Kristin showed was a Padet she created for participants of the webinar series (http://padlet.com/wall/CompandTech). I know Padlet and I've used it lots. But I've used it in a very simple way. I've used it for kids to put sticky notes up as a way to think collectively I had no idea it could be used as a conversation starter with videos, images, padlets on padlets and more. Her Padlet gave me new visions for what Padlet can do. I didn't know you could change the background. I had missed so much about this tool.

So I played around with a few ways to use Padlet as a way to begin conversations and as a way to collect our thinking. I also think it will be a great way for kids to access learning and to continue the conversation at home.

I played with a board to think about how I might use Padlet in Read Aloud. We are currently reading How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor. I created a board with the cover of the book, a book trailer and a link to Barbara O'Connor's website. We have had so much success with Corkulous as a way to stretch and collect our thinking around read aloud that Padlet seems to add even more options. I can see adding a board within a board to do the things we are doing on Corkulous. And since it is web-based, it can be accessed from home and school.

We also played with a board to collect and add to as a class. We have a bird watching area at our school and we've been spending time there for some of our science and math work. The Padlet board shares the ways we are using various tools to collect information. This is a site that will help us see how different tools can be used for different purposes. Hopefully it will start a conversation around tools that really help you observe and collect data in efficient ways.

Today, I attended the Literacy Connection Event and Ruth Ayres spoke about Writing Celebrations. She talked about the importance of writing celebrations--both the process and the product. I'm thinking now of ways I can you Padlet for writing celebrations. I am thinking we can share lines we've written,a board of links to finished products, a board of student writing with room for response. I am going to play some more to see where this thinking might go.

I have been playing with lots of tools over the last few years but, I so love finding one tool and thinking of new possibilities for use. I am going to focus on this one tool for a while and think about various ways to use it, play around with what the tool can do and grow some possibilities! Thanks Kristin for stretching my thinking about using this tool for more than one thing!

*For more posts on Digital Literacy, visit Reflections on the Teche for the Link Up!

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I'm participating in a Heinemann webinar series that Kristin Ziemke is doing . She is my new favorite person and I've learned so much from her over the last few weeks. Her classroom is amazing and she embed technology in thoughtful and authentic ways.

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Another great link for image study. Faces in Things!

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Here is a sample book trailer template.

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Here are resources for digital informational text for kids.

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Check out short video clips that promote thinking at The Kid Should See This.

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Here is the link to Google's Zeitgeist, or sign of the times.

Live curiously!

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1.2 trillion searches. 146 languages. See what the world searched for.

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Here is a link to the resources page on my website.

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Here are video app tutorials created by students.

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These are the apps featured by students from Burley School and National Teachers Academy during 2013 and 2014 App Speed Dating sessions.

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Here is a link to my Symbaloo page of resources.

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List of cross curricular apps for grades K 6 that amplify student thinking. These apps are student directed, collaborative, creative and can be used in a number of configurations to capture thinking.