eBook Review: Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom

Let me disclose a few things: I know a lot of these editors and writers through my connections in the National Writing Project; I hung out with the editors in Seattle as they were working on their drafts (and I was working on some resources for the Making Learning Connected MOOC). I knew they were […]

#Rhizo14: Steal This Poem

As I work my way into the first week of a P2PU course around open learning and Rhizomatic Learning, I’ve been thinking again about who owns what in the digital landscape. This connects to the theme of “cheating as learning” in the first week and about the ways in which Terry Elliott and I have […]

Open Up the Heartstrings — Considering Music

Three events have me thinking deeper about music this week. Though separate, they all connect. First, I finished reading Rob Sheffield’s Turn Around Bright Eyes, which is a wonderful rumination on the power of music (and in Sheffield’s case, Karaoke) to create meaning in the phases of our lives. Second, I have been culling together […]

Tinkering with Tynker for Hour of Code

Tynker for Schools from Tynker on Vimeo. I am going to use Tynker with my sixth grade students as part of the Hour of Code next week, just to see how they do and if any of my sixth graders get the coding bug (good bug — interest). I’ve been playing around with the site […]

The Read/Make Digital Writing Adventure

  I’m popping in and out of an interesting adventure this weekend built out of last year’s Digital Writing Month. This year, over the course of a weekend, the goal is to construct a collaborative novel in a project called Digital Writing Makertext, or read/make. Sort of. Check out the premise: Prompt: The novel we […]

All in for Audio at DS106

What have I been up to this past week with the Headless DS106? Other than watching my son create freeze-frame zombie scenes all around the first floor of our house with his Lego collection (Seriously, they are everywhere, and none of them have heads right now, and they all look like they are about to […]

Slice of Life: When Tales Get Fractured

We’re just starting a short unit on plays and drama, as I break my classes into groups for some fractured fairy tales. They are a hoot, allow for collaboration and fun at the start of the year, and give me a chance to get some data on reading fluency. It’s a read-aloud activity, not a […]

The Loudest Pencil in the World

We’ve been working on a short story project for the past few days, and I have been so amazed at the quiet focus of my sixth graders on this project. You can hear a pin drop for 45 minutes at a time as they work on their stories. Then, yesterday, in one of my classes, […]

Six Word Biographies and the Making Learning Connected MOOC

I was so very pleased when folks in the Making Learning Connected MOOC began to pin themselves to our collaborative map. Partly, I was just intrigued by where my fellow maker/writers were located. Partly, I wanted a visual map (which connected to that week’s activity around mapmaking). And I also wanted to prompt folks to […]