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Use Voxer to organize students into discussion groups based on common books. Students can conduct asynchronous discussions about their book via web or app, and you can listen to them at any time.

Direct students to create a group chat for their book, invite their group members, and then invite you as a member so you can monitor their discussion (or participate).

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Walkie Talkie App for Team Communication | Voxer

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Voxer is a Walkie Talkie messaging app for your smartphone with live voice (like a PTT walkie talkie), text, photo and location sharing. Download Voxer for iPhone, Android, or use Voxer for web

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Some twists on the "Old School" approach: Lit Circle Roles

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Some twists on the "Old School" approach: Lit Circle Roles

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Assign (or let students choose) from a variety of roles that guide their job in the Lit Circle.

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Lots of ideas for concurrent activities and culminating projects from The New York Times (scroll down the page to find them)

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Alex Nabaum

Overview | What are the benefits and drawbacks of reading both independently and as part of a group, like a class, book club or online network? In this lesson, students consider the value of private and collective reading experiences and then form book clubs around titles they "pitch" to each other. They respond to the texts as they read and execute a final project. Ideas for concurrent and culminating activities are provided.

Materials | Books and literature for groups to read; materials for organizing book groups and for students to respond, like journals, physical and bulletin boards, etc. (See more below.)

Warm-Up | Tell students to divide a piece of paper into two columns and make two lists. The first list should consist of books they have read with others or connected with them about. Have them think about times when being in class helped them understand a book better, when they talked with friends about it, visited fan sites or participated in interactive online book-related activities or book releases.

In the second column, they should list their private reading experiences (broadly defined, including books, magazines, blogs they follow, etc.). What titles have they preferred to read alone - and perhaps preferred to keep to themselves and avoid even telling others about?

Invite students to share any tidbit they like from their lists - a title, an experience, a reflection. If students want to keep their private lists private, so be it. You might want to share your own reflections, too, or those of readers who responded to The Times's Arts Beat blog post "Where Does a Love of Reading Come From?" to offer more perspectives.

After sharing, have students return to their lists and swap the headings, imagining what it would have been like to read the titles they read privately with a class or group and vice versa.

Ask: How would your experiences have been different if this had been the case? What is the difference between reading a book and reflecting on it privately and discussing it with peers in a class? What are the benefits to reading privately? What are the benefits of sharing a reading experience and discussing a book with others? What are the drawbacks of reading alone and of reading with a group? Is there room for both in your reading life, or do you generally prefer one or the other? Why do you think that is? What do you think it says about you as a reader?

Related | In "The Book Club With Just One Member," Motoko Rich mediates on the tension between reading as a private activity and the myriad public forums that exist for literary discussion:

Reading might well have been among the last remaining private activities, but it is now a relentlessly social pursuit. Gaggles of readers get together monthly to sip chardonnay and discuss the latest Oprah selection. On fan sites for the Harry Potter and Twilight series, enthusiastic followers dissect plot lines, argue over their favorite scenes and analyze characters. Publishers, meanwhile, are fashioning social networking sites where they hope to attract readers who want to comment on books and one another.

The collective literary experience certainly has its benefits. Reading with a group can feed your passion for a book, or help you understand it better. Social reading may even convince you that you liked something you thought you didn't.

There is a different class of reader, though. They feel that their relationship with a book, its characters and the author is too intimate to share. "The pursuit of reading," Virginia Woolf wrote, "is carried on by private people."

Read the article with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

1. Why do you think Miranda, the literary character quoted at the beginning of the article, compares thinking of other people reading her book to "watching someone go through the box of private stuff that [she] keeps under her bed"? In what way are those two acts similar?

2. Do you agree with the assertion in the article that "bookish" types prefer to read privately while "casual readers, by contrast, are drawn by the social aspects"? Does our warm-up discussion support her observation? Would you define yourself as "bookish" or a "casual reader," neither or both?

3. What are some of the benefits of a "collective literary experience"?

4. Why would publishers try to use social media to "stimulate a new reading culture"?

5. What other books would you characterize as crying out for discussion (like the Harry Potter series, according to the article) versus too challenging to tackle alone (like James Joyce's "Ulysses")? When has discussing reading in class or with a friend helped you understand and enjoy it?

Activity | Explain to students that they will form book clubs to delve further into the private reading / group reading dichotomy.

To start, you might share an excerpt and photos from another Times article by Motoko Rich, "A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like," in which she explores how teachers can foster a love of reading by moving beyond the "whole class novel" and offering choice in the classroom:

For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird," the Harper Lee classic that many Americans regard as a literary rite of passage.

But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign "Mockingbird" - or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.

Among their choices: James Patterson's adrenaline-fueled "Maximum Ride" books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the Captain Underpants series of comic-book-style novels.

But then there were students like Jennae Arnold, a soft-spoken eighth grader who picked challenging titles like "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest J. Gaines and "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, of which she wrote, partly in text-message speak: "I would have N3V3R thought of or about something like that on my own."

The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America's schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.

Ask: What seem to be the benefits and drawbacks of instituting student choice in literature classes? How can choice be implemented as part of the curriculum in a meaningful way? How can both private reading and group discussion be supported in a literature class?

Explain that models for including student-selected titles in the classroom are reading groups or book clubs or literature circles, and that these approaches encourage choice and independence while at the same time providing the benefits of a shared experience.

Then tell students that they will "pitch" titles for class book clubs to read. Give them time to develop their pitches, in which they should explain the merits of their chosen title(s) and why others should read it. They should use appropriate resources to research titles that intrigue them but which they haven't read. You may wish to provide some reading lists as a starting point, including both canonical and popular titles.

You might pitch some titles, too, or offer several choices in a genre (e.g., memoir, graphic novel), on a theme (like banned books, adolescence or books by women) or by an author ( Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Salinger, etc.).

Explain that the book clubs can also support private reading. For example, groups can be made up of students reading different books and sharing those experiences, finding common themes, recommending their books to each other and so on. Students might want to address in their pitches whether they think their titles are best read alone or as a group and why.

Then hold a book talk and have students choose the titles they would most like to read based on their classmates' and teacher's pitches. Group students according to their choices, with no more than four per group.

Once groups are set up, assign a certain number of pages to be read each night and introduce response activities to be done either at home or during class while students read. Or give students the autonomy to develop their own reading and response assignments and schedules, and post them on a bulletin board or wiki.

As groups meet during class time, circulate and check in with each group. You might also occasionally collect and respond to student journals and writing.

The following are possible activities to engage students during and after reading, whether they are reading a book in common or independently.
Concurrent Activities
Online Network: Set up a classroom Ning, wiki or other social network for independent reading. (Learn more about Ning here.) As the teacher, you can set up forum discussions, in which you bring book clubs together by posing questions to students about their reading, and create groups where book clubs can discuss their reading together online. Students can blog about their books, create pages and comment on one another's pages. This ensures that group connections around literature continue outside the classroom walls.

Literary Letters: Assess student reading by having students write you letters at various points in the book, going beyond plot summary to themes or specific literary elements at different points in the book. Other ideas: They might each write a letter on a different aspect, like one on character, one on setting, one on conflict, one on theme, etc.; or they might write casual letters about the personal connections they are making, the challenges the book presents, and so on.

Pen Pals: Students write letters to others reading the same book or to students reading different books, perhaps using the ideas above.

Dialogic Journals: Have students keep a two-column journal as they read, reflecting on each night's reading before they come to class. In one column, students list quotations they find interesting or important, and in the other, they reflect on each passage. In class, students could share entries and even comment on one another's journals.

Comments, Quotes and Questions: For each reading assignment, ask students to come up with one comment, one quotation and one question they would like to discuss with their group members. Structure group discussions and activities in the classroom around their questions and quotations.

Digital Character Studies: Students create an "online life" - via a social networking site, blog, series of text message transcriptions, etc. - for the character(s) of their choice.

Culminating Projects

Many of these will work whether students have read a book in common as a small group or whether individuals have read their own choice books within a group. Choose one for all groups to complete or present as a menu from which student groups can choose.

Blogs or Web Sites: Using WordPress or another free blogging or Web development software, set up a blog for students to review their choices like Nancie Atwell's students at the Center for Teaching and Learning do. Two Times models: Paper Cuts and Arts Beat. Link the blog to your school's library Web site, so that students schoolwide have access to your readers' recommendations.

Podcasts and Videos: Students collaborate to create podcasts or videos to share what they have learned in their reading. Post them to your classroom Ning, to SchoolTube, or another appropriate sharing site.

Games: Groups develop a board, card or online game based on the content of their books, then exchange games with another group and play.

Book Jackets: Groups create book jackets for their books to share with the class, as one English teacher affiliated with the West Tennessee Writing Project does with her students.

Soundtracks and Liner Notes: Individual members of book groups contribute songs to a group soundtrack that captures the themes, symbols and ideas of the book they read, like this.

Posters: Each student creates a poster in the style of the American Library Association's celebrity Read posters in which group members pose with their book and perhaps "advertise" it with significant or compelling quotations. Post them in your school's library.

Readers' Theater Scripts: Students create readers' theater scripts of their books and perform them for one another or other classes.

Reading Festival: Groups select the passages that were most meaningful, dramatic, lyrical or otherwise notable to them, and then read aloud their selections in a class festival. They might even try to learn their passages by heart and deliver them from memory.

Literary Tributes: Individually or as a group, students write their own creative pieces in the style or spirit of the author or work they read, then compile a chapbook.

Book Reviews: Students write book reviews modeled on Times reviews, then compile them into a publication modeled on the Sunday Book Review to share with others in the school community.

Marketing Campaigns: Students create marketing materials designed to "sell" the works they read to other teenagers. Can they persuade readers in other groups to read their book?

Illustrated Projects: Based on their books, students create and display "illustrated columns," à la Maira Kalman, based on their books.

Zines:Students create and circulate zines dedicated to their author or to characters in the book they read.

Exhibits: Each group curates part of a classroom exhibit on the books they read.

Going Further | Expand book clubs beyond the classroom to include students from the whole school by advertising and meeting before or after school in the library or a cozy classroom space. You might also hold a culminating event schoolwide, like the reading festival or exhibit.

Teachers might also use book clubs to inspire students to read independently outside of class and of book clubs, keeping track of their reading throughout the year using one or more of the concurrent activities above.

Teachers How do you encourage a love of reading in your classroom? What activities do you find useful for engaging students in reading for themselves? Have book groups worked for you? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Standards | From McREL, for grades 6 to 12:

Language Arts
1. Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process.
5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process.
6. Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of literary texts.
7. Uses the general skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts.
8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes.

Arts and Communication
1. Understands the principles, processes and products associated with arts and communication media.
2. Knows and applies appropriate criteria to arts and communication products.
3. Uses critical and creative thinking in various arts and communication settings.
4. Understands ways in which the human experience is transmitted and reflected in the arts and communication.
5. Knows a range of arts and communication works from various historical and cultural periods.

Life Skills: Working With Others
1. Contributes to the overall effort of a group.
4. Displays effective interpersonal communication skills.

Life Skills: Self-Regulation
1. Sets and manages goals.

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Amanda Christy Brown and Holly Epstein Ojalvo

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Join the Club! Supporting Independent Reading With Book Groups

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Alex Nabaum Overview | What are the benefits and drawbacks of reading both independently and as part of a group, like a class, book club or online network? In this lesson, students consider the value of private and collective reading experiences and then form book clubs around titles they "pitch" to each other.

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"Beyond the Book Report": The New York Times offers even more ways for students to respond to literature.

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Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we've adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature.

Do you assign book reports, in any format, to your students? What do they look like? Join the conversation!

A Times-Style Book Review

Read The Times's Books section to scan several current book reviews of novels, story collections and poetry, and to use the search feature to find reviews of older books. Next, make a list of common elements. These might include a summary of the plot or main points or themes, comparisons or references to the writer's earlier works, discussion of the writer's contemporaries or influences, how the reviewer assesses the work's quality; connections (if any) the reviewer has to the subject matter; and the like.

Next, write your own Times-style review of a book, incorporating many of these elements. If The Times has also reviewed the book you've chosen, avoid reading it until you have crafted your own review, of course.

Book Talk, With You as Host

Create a podcast around a book or author, perhaps inspired by the format of those found in the Times' Book Review. You might act as host and introduce several different segments, such as a mock interview with the author or an expert on the topic, or a discussion of how a classic book is suddenly timely.

You might also include free-form segments like "The Book That Changed My Life," "What We're Reading," or "My First-Ever Favorite Book." You could vary these with "advertisements" for books, top-10 lists of favorite authors or characters, or news about book-related events, such as online book discussions or local events such as readings given by authors.

For classic works, you might set the podcast in the time of its publication, considering other works popular at the time, the issues of the day and so on. Or, include an "interview" with the author, drawing from research such as published interviews, profiles, memoirs and biographies to ground the portrayal in fact. Another idea? Role-play a conversation of writers from the past or present sitting down together to talk about one another's work, or their own works in progress, with the podcast acting as the "tape recorder" that captures the whole thing.

Judging the Book by Its Cover

Start by considering how a cover "sells" a book and serves as a quick visual reference, and make a quick list of favorite or most memorable covers. Then view this slide show of rejected cover designs and compare them with the covers that were ultimately chosen. Are the final ones better? Why?

Next, create paintings or other illustrations to honor a book you're reading. You might do this in homage to the covers of favorite books, or you might create a cover for a work that doesn't have its own cover, such as a piece you read in an anthology or story collection. The covers can be representative of the setting, a key scene, main characters or major plot event, or be more abstract or conceptual, capturing the tone of the work, a theme or character's mental state.Or, you might want to create covers in the style of a favorite artist.

Shot on Location

Choose key scenes from a novel that is set in a real place and find photos or illustrations online that show the locations described by the author. (You can choose photos that fit the novel's descriptions if the setting is not directly named or is not a real place.)

Another option is to choose an author and show the places from a variety of his or her works, such as this feature about novelist Haruki Murakami, which includes a photo, related excerpt and voice recording of the person who chose them. As a low-tech alternative, you might draw, and annotate with relevant passages, maps of novels' environs or all the settings used in a writer's oeuvre.

For a longer-term project, visit the real life "stomping grounds" of a fictional character or visit places with a rich literary history and create a blog or podcast about them. You might record yourself reading relevant passages or discussing the works in the very spot the author(s) wrote about.
Bring the Beat
Create (and record, and add liner notes explaining) a soundtrack for a book you're reading, or invent a rap about it, as these Stanford students did about the biology of how the body converts food into energy.

Making Lists of Favorites

Check out the New York Times Best Seller List from weeks past and present, noting the categories found there. Use or tweak the categories to take a poll of classmates, teachers, parents, school and public librarians and other readers to learn what books they are currently reading or have recently read. Then, work with others to make your own lists - whether of local favorites; of books read in school over the years; or, perhaps, of genre suggestions along the lines of "If you liked the 'Harry Potter' books, you'll love...".

You and your classmates might then each choose one book to write up in the style of an Inside the List blurb that tells about the book, its author, its audience or all of these. Or, create "shelf talkers" about some of these books for your school library modeled after those in this bookstore.

Annotate Lists on One Topic

Choose an author, genre, time period, historical event, place or other relatively general topic and research books by or about the subject, perhaps starting with the Times' Sunday Book Review or Book News and Reviews.

Create annotated lists of published works about it, like this one on the Civil War, organized by category, chronology or other technique. You might then create brochure or Web pages, or a library display, as part of a class collection called "So You Want to Know About..."

Rate and Debate

Brainstorm thought-provoking questions about a common text, such as what might have happened five years before the events in a novel begin, 25 years after they end, or what would happen if a key plot point was changed. Then, ask several people to weigh in and give short answers in order to create a Room for Debate- style response.

Book Report by Video

Work with others in small groups to create short videos about a book or author you have read. You might voice-over narration and and include interviews, as in this example which is about the "Babar" series of children's books.

Be creative about your interviewees. For instance, you might talk to fans of a book series waiting until midnight for the release of the next installment; people of the same generation about what a seminal book meant to them as children; or experts like teachers, professors and historians who can weigh in on the significance of a often-taught book, or on a book controversy.

Another approach to the video is to stage key scenes from novels or stories, or record dramatic readings, with sound effects. Or, make an author and his or her works the subject of a video, with an actor portraying him or her and reenacting important career and life events.
The Graphic Novel Version
Everything from the Bible to "Twilight" to "The Art of War" is being turned into a graphic novel. How would the book you're currently reading be transformed by this genre? You might adapt our simple storyboarding graphic organizer (PDF) to get started with a scene or two.

Book Blurbs on Blogs

Read the "books" category of the ArtsBeat blog for a week or more, researching the topics mentioned there. Then, work on short blog posts of your own that go into greater detail, or give the "back story," about each news item for your audience. For example, a recent post about new and ongoing manga series might inspire a segment on manga in general.

Why Your Favorite Author Matters

Write persuasive essays that combine research, critical analysis of major works and personal accounts that raise and answer the question "Why does this author matter?"

You might begin by reading Sunday Book Review essays with similar aims, such as this one about Lionel Trilling, this "Riff" column about Joan Didion, or by reading the back issues of the review.

You can also search Times Topics pages which collect all the news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published on topic, and find nearly any published author - whether Stephen King or Shakespeare -. Use them as a starting point for research.

Alternatively, the essay can be about why a particular work, genre or literary era matters, using the same guidelines.
The Book Report of the Future
Has the format of the book report assignment in your school morphed over time? If so, how? What do you imagine a "book report" in 2025 might look like? Use our post on the the "future of reading" that examines how technology is changing reading, readers and books to propose new formats for presenting reader responses to literature.For instance, perhaps you and your classmates can join or create an online book sharing and reviewing community, design a book app, or write about the difference between reading a paper-and-ink book and an e-book or some other digital format.
Related Lessons from The Learning Network 10 Ways to Use The New York Times for Teaching Literature "Going Beyond the Book Report With Literature Exhibits" "Our Computers, Ourselves: Imagining the Digital Lives of Authors and Characters" "Join the Club: Supporting Independent Reading with Book Groups" "Short and Sweet: Deconstructing and Crafting Brief Arts Reviews "We're Booked" "Reviews Revealed" Other Learning Network Resources
Fill-In | The First Times' Review of the First Harry Potter Novel

Resource | Ten Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week

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Beyond the Book Report: Ways to Respond to Literature Using New York Times Models

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Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we've adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature.

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A post on further uses for Voxer: study groups, lit circles, PLCs, or even personal use.

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While doing research for my upcoming e-book, The Teacher's Guide to Tech, I have come across dozens of tools with pretty awesome potential for teaching and learning. These six are the ones I think are the most interesting and most useful right now. Wherever you fall on the technology spectrum - from newbie to experienced user - there's probably something here you haven't tried yet.

Although most of these tools aren't brand-new, they are all steadily growing in popularity, and each one can enhance teaching and learning in a unique, time-saving, or engaging way. For every tool, I provide a brief overview, my personal rating of its difficulty, a video that demonstrates how the tool works, and a list of suggested ways you can use it.
Turn Hand-Picked Content into Your Own Online Newspaper

Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: It helps to be familiar with Twitter.

Teaching students to curate - to carefully select content and build a collection around a particular theme - engages some of the high-level thinking skills and standards that are hardest to get at: Consider the Analyze and Evaluate levels of the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, or the Common Core's Reading Anchor Standard 7, which asks students to "Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words."

Curation digs into all of this. Plus, it's a real-world skill that takes your students far, far away from multiple-choice land. But it's a skill most teachers rarely bother with.

A tool like Paper.li is a fun, visually appealing, tech-savvy way to teach curation. It lets the user choose online content around a specific theme, then place it into their own online "newspaper," displaying individual items as stories. The newspaper then gets its own unique link which can be shared with others.

Here's a quick demonstration of how this tool works:
Suggested Uses:

For a lesson on research skills, assign students to produce their own Paper.li newspaper on a topic related to your content area.

If your students are on Twitter, assign a unique hashtag that connects to a whole-class newspaper. Individual students' tweets (which could be given deadlines and grades) would be selected for each edition.

Teachers or whole schools could create a school-wide Paper.li on a weekly or monthly basis to share with students and families.

Gorgeous, Web-Based Alternative to PowerPoint
Difficulty Level: Easy
Prerequisites: It helps to know some PowerPoint.

I'm going to assume you're already familiar with PowerPoint. And if you've also been wowed by what Prezi can do, with all its moving around and zooming in and whatnot, you'll want to get to know emaze. It's a web-based presentation tool, which means that, like with Prezi, you create your presentations online, store them there, and can share them from anywhere with internet access. No more flash drives to carry around!

But what I love the most about emaze is their templates. They're just gorgeous and cool. The Gallery template is set up like an art museum, and with every click you sort of walk around the gallery in 3-D, looking at the stuff on the walls. The Infographic template is sort of like a living, breathing infographic you can move around on.

Take a look at emaze here:
Suggested Uses: Discussions Any Place, Any Time
Difficulty Level: Easy
Prerequisites: Smart phone or iOS or Android device for all users.

I am completely in love with Voxer. I have only been using this tool for about six weeks, but I really can't get enough of it. Voxer is an app for any Android or iOS device (iphone, iPad, iPod) that allows users to have voice chats. Imagine any message board you'd find on a website, where lots of people contribute to a discussion, except it's all voice recordings. Just press play on the first one and they will all play, one after the other, in the order they were put there.

Why is this so great? Because of time. Because sitting at a computer and typing gets old after a while and sometimes it's just faster to say it. Even faster than texting. And to be able to have a lot of people all in the same discussion at once, participating whenever they're able to rather than trying to find one exact time when everyone can be there? That is just so good for busy people.

Right now I am in a Voxer group with about 12 other teachers, where we share ideas, books, etc. I have an ongoing Voxer chat with another blogger, where we swap ideas and try to solve each other's problems. I even conducted a complete interview for a recent article I wrote on ESL strategies. Every single quote I got from Melissa Eddington came to me through Voxer.

If you never add Voxer to your teaching repertoire, at least try it for personal use, because you and I both know you never have enough time for anything.

This video shows Voxer in action:
Suggested Uses: Scan a Little Picture, Take Students Anywhere.
Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: Teacher needs to download a free QR creator; students need hand-held devices (phones or tablets) with free QR readers. Can work even if class has a limited number of devices.

QR codes - short for quick response codes - are those funny little black-and-white pictures that have popped up everywhere in the last few years. I saw my first one in a real estate magazine about three years ago. The agent in the picture told me to scan it. I had no idea what she was talking about.

I do now. I actually just made my first QR code the other day (it's the one right above this section). It took about five seconds to make it on my laptop; I used this QR Code Generator. Then I installed the QR Code Reader onto my phone. I held my phone up to my laptop screen, scanned the QR code, and instantly, my phone was sent right to the site I had assigned to the QR code. I was so surprised I jumped up out of my chair.

Technology does that to me sometimes.

This article from Getting Smart describes some really practical educational uses for QR codes. For a thorough list of code creation tools and readers, plus a long list of ideas for using them, take a look at Kathy Shrock's Guide to QR codes in the classroom.

If you're still having a little trouble picturing how QR codes work, watch this:
Suggested Uses: Voice Feedback on Student Assignments
Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: Set up a Google Drive account first.

If you and your students use Google Docs to compose and store student writing projects, there's a tool built into that platform that will allow you to give feedback more easily, more quickly, and with much more depth. With Kaizena teachers can go into student documents and add written or voice comments. It's the latter that's the real game-changer, because with voice, you can provide feedback with much more depth, in less time, and with more clarity: Compared with writing, there's less chance of a student misinterpreting your meaning when you convey it with your voice.

To learn more, read this in-depth discussion of Kaizena's capabilities from John Hardison at Getting Smart, and this overview from Free Technology for Teachers.

Then watch this video to see how Kaizena works:
Suggested Uses: Instant Formative Assessment with Only ONE Device
Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: You must have at least one iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod) or Android device.

It would be great if all of our students had their own devices, and all of those devices worked all the time, and we could conduct seamless formative assessments all the time, just like in our dreams. But in many, many schools, that is not a reality.

With Plickers, you can still take advantage of high-tech capabilities, even if your classroom has only one device. Even if that one device is your personal phone. Really.

Here's how Plickers work: You sign up for a free account. You create a class, assigning a number to each student. Plickers gives you a unique scannable image for each student that you print on a piece of paper. They look like this:

Each student's image means something different depending on how they turn it: Facing one way, it means "A." Facing another way, it means "B." And so on, allowing for four possible answers. This lets you ask an endless, flexible amount of multiple-choice questions, and students can answer every one with that same sheet of paper, depending on how they hold it up.

To gather responses, you simply hold up your smartphone or other iOS or Android device equipped with a reader, scan each student's card in one smooth flow, and the results are immediately collected in one spot on your device.

Take a closer look at Plickers in this video:
Suggested Uses:

Conduct formative assessments while you teach.

Use Plickers like exit slips, to find out what students learned after a lesson, or as an anticipatory set, to provide a jumping-off point for a lesson.

Poll students (or if you are an administrator, poll your faculty) as a way of conducting a vote on a change in policy, where to take a field trip, or even what kind of pizza to order.

Want more tools?

The Teacher's Guide to Tech

If you're not yet familiar with the Teacher's Guide to Tech, let me introduce you: It's my encyclopedia of educational technology, a 265-page PDF you can keep on your home computer, work computer, or any device that will read a PDF.

The whole purpose of the guide is to make it fast and easy for you to navigate the world of ed tech. Once you start using it, you won't believe how much you'll learn, or how FAST you'll learn it!

Where to Get It

Single-User Licenses:
If you just want a copy for yourself, you can get a copy atTeachers Pay Teachers or on Teachable.

Multi-User Licenses:
To get the guide for your team, school, or even district, you can save a lot by getting multi-user licenses. Although these are available onTeachers Pay Teachers, I am offering deeper discounts for multiple licenses on Teachable.
Purchase on Teachable Purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers

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While doing research for my upcoming e-book, The Teacher's Guide to Tech, I have come across dozens of tools with pretty awesome potential for teaching and learning. These six are the ones I think are the most interesting and most useful right now.

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Voxer: Tips for Getting Started (and FAQ)

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Voxer: Tips for Getting Started (and FAQ)

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Here are four tips to help you get Voxing right away! 1. Find your friends by looking them up in the Voxer Directory by Email or Full Name - Connect with your friends already using Voxer! On i...

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Use Schoology as a space for students to conduct their own book talks. Here's one way to do it:

Teacher creates a Schoology Discussion board for each student book or group (or compile them all in one Discussion).

Each student group will need one chromebook.

Each group should have one of their members sign into parkland.Schoology, then click on the Discussion for their group.

Each group should review the teacher's instructions for what they'll be discussing during today's book talk (see possible examples in the two posts to the right; it's also best to have handouts for each student so they know what they should be discussing).

When ready, each group should use Schoology's audio recording feature to begin recording their group's book talk. The teacher should track time and provide updates while the students are doing this (e.g. "Alright, we're 5 minutes in: you should be sharing your individual responses at this point!").

When finished, students should end the recording, insert it into the post, and click post (note: if they don't actually click "post," they'll lose the recording).

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First Impressions.
Go around the group and share:

Your name and what page you're on.

What happened where you most recently left off.

Your impressions of the book thus far: what's interesting, strange, confusing or revealing so far? What questions do you have for the group?

Deepen Discussions.

Go around the circle again: each member should share the most interesting moment from his/her Reading Journal ( (encourage student to student interaction with this: you're "on the air"!).

Predict the Future.

Close it out by making your predictions about where the story's headed, or sharing what you're hoping will be resolved in the coming chapters.

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Have students complete a reading journal during reading, then share moments from these journals during the Book Talk.