Lots of exciting news, team!

First, a huge thank you and shout out to all the wonderful folks who donated books. (You all ordered almost half the list in a week.) My scholars are tearing through the Bone graphic novels; they are checking out Wimpy Kid books left and right; and they are ecstatic about reading Kindle books in the cloud.

Second, I’m joining the blogging team on Teach For America’s internal social network, TFANet.org. I’ve partnered with staffer Lewis Leiboh, owner of the EdTech 101 blog. Together, we’re going to develop more content to get corps members effective digital tools. While TFANet.org is only accessible to corps members, staff, and alums, I will be cross-posting the content on appratt.com.

Third, I’m trying to refine some ideas about why digital technology isn’t something extra to bolt on to literacy instruction, but has to be woven in the same way we rely on other technologies, like books. A few years at Science Progress, editing technical jargon into accessible prose and building websites, led me to a simple conclusion: to be prepared for the current economy, students need to develop their literacy skills in a digital context. I saw successful and powerful lawyers, scientists, journalists, and other professionals leverage online communications to change the world around them. I want the young minds in our capital region to have the same power.

That’s part of what I mean by saying that “Technology is a Literacy.” To shape public policy, influence coalitions, and communicate scientific discoveries, mastery of the English language is just a prerequisite. You also have to know the tools that launch ideas into orbit.

Finally, I’ll share a few highlights from this week, as my scholars broke new ground with their iPads and class web tools:

Wednesday
Most of my scholars took their first vocabulary quiz of the year… online. I built the quiz in Moodle, the open-source “Learning Management System” I’m using for our class website. There were nine multiple-choice questions, and as soon as the students submitted their final answers, they could immediately see what they got right, what they got wrong, and their final score. On my end, I had nearly instantaneous data on how the students performed. Sobering, but a good start.

Thursday
One of the common differentiation recommendations for lower-level readers is to let them listen to an audio recording of the text as they read along. Fortunately, we have nice new textbooks from Holt McDougal that come with some killer teacher CDs/DVDs, including professional audio recordings of most texts in the book. In addition to snagging the .pdf version of the text and making that accessible, I uploaded the audio recording to our Moodle site. Students who needed the audio support could listen along on their iPads while simultaneously reading a digital version of the article.

Friday
Maryland standardized tests emphasize a short response format called the “Brief Constructed Response,” or BCR. A BCR demonstrates that a scholar has read the text, can identify and explain a detail from the text, and can show evidence of inferring, or “reading between the lines” to figure out what is unstated in the text, but still important. A majority of the students in class Friday submitted their practice BCR online through Moodle. Now, I have an archive of that work and can easily score it and write feedback online.

Thank you all for your support.

Read, write, rock!
-Andrew