I’m very excited to announce that my colleague, Jordyn Sims, and I have developed a pitch for the first national TFA Social Innovation Award. It’s called Textlab, and it will be a streamlined web application for managing digital materials in literacy classrooms.

Textlab.org

(Click the image to watch the video pitch.)

Teaching students literacy skills in a digital environment requires better software. We need a laboratory for reading and writing the way college students and professionals read and write: efficiently, collaboratively, and on the Internet. We need a Textlab.

Textlab is a lightweight Learning Management System, or LMS, built specifically for middle and high school literacy instruction. It allows students to practice critical reading and writing skills and to create portfolios of digital work. It also allows instructors to provide targeted, differentiated assignments and materials to students and to offer feedback in a secure online format. It is a platform-independent web application, optimized for desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile access.

The full pitch describes the project in depth. You can read that on the project homepage, textlab.org.

Teach For America is organizing the competition on a social networking site for start-ups called Vator.tv. You can follow the competition and check out other pitches here, and see the Textlab profile here.

The Ask

How can you help make Textlab a reality? We need mentors. This will be our first edtech startup and we’d appreciate any and all of the advice and support we can get. As we move forward, we’ll need help with design, programming, marketing, business, and legal matters, to name a few. Let us know if you are willing to pitch in or refer us to folks who can. Just reply to me at this address or appratt@gmail.com.

What’s Up in Mr. Pratt’s Class

The prototype for Textlab is the customized implementation of the Moodle learning management system we use in Mr. Pratt’s class. Since just talking about what we’re doing online didn’t really capture the power of the system, I made a screencast that demos some of the features. (With oblique homage to Steve Zissou’s “Let Me Tell You About My Boat”)

Video: A Super-Quick Sprint Through the Features on My Class Moodle Site

Okay folks! Time to get back to grading. I hope you’re as excited about these projects as I am.

Read, Write, Rock!
—Andrew (a.k.a Mr. Pratt)

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

Dear Friends and Family:

School started last Monday in Prince George’s County. My new students are already lucky. First, they weathered an earthquake like brave scholars. (No injuries or damage at our school.) Second, thanks to my principals, they will (very soon) have iPads to work with. Building the tools, culture, and processes for a digital classroom will be an ongoing experiment, and I want to bring you all along for the ride.

While we missed a day of classes on Wednesday while engineers inspected buildings around the district, we still got lots of good work done. Students practiced classroom procedures; learned about Big Goals and expectations; talked about our jobs as scholars, teachers, and a learning community; and picked out their first independent reading books for the year.

The iPads should make their way from storage to our classroom within the next few days, and I don’t know if the students are more excited or if I am. In the interim, there are two ways you can help get us off to a strong start this year: by donating swag or by donating books. Please note that these asks are just suggestions of ways you can help support literacy for my scholars. I offer them because folks ask what they can do. If you’d like to share other immaterial skills and ideas, I’d love to talk about class visits, curricular suggestions, etc. Thank you in advance for all your support.

Donating Swag

Ultimately, learning should be intrinsically motivating, but sometimes it helps middle schoolers to have a little external motivation in the form of cool stuff. With the goal of making my scholars college and career ready, I’d much rather be able to hand them a college lanyard or a Google-branded pen, rather than Jolly Ranchers. In our class, scholars can earn prizes through raffles or by amassing our special in-class currency.

The ask here is just for freebies—nothing donated to the classroom rewards cache can cost you anything. If you’ve got some buttons, bags, or beanies you think 7th graders would be into and are willing to donate them, just let me know about it on this form:

Google Form: I Have Swag! 7th Graders Will Love It!

Donating Books

Last year, many of you helped support my classroom library with generous donations of books from an Amazon Wishlist. I’ve begun a new wishlist under a separate username so that my students can have access to both traditional paper books and Kindle Edition eBooks. That’s right: if you’re so inspired, you can give digital editions of the books on the list so that several scholars at a time (depending on the publisher’s DRM rules) can read the same high-interest novel. As well, the digital editions are immune to oily fingers and errant pencil smears. But of course, some of these books only come in the paper-and-ink format, which is wonderful as well.

Amazon: Wish List—Mr. Pratt’s Class 2011-2012

Here’s to another exciting week. On behalf of myself and my scholars, thank you.

Read, write, rock!
—Andrew (aka Mr. Pratt)

One of the things I really want to push this year with my scholars is the idea that literacy is a pathway to all kinds of awesome jobs. A friend who works on the digital team for OfA forwarded this job posting to an email list recently, and I think it’s a prime example of why Literacy is Power:

+++

Obama for America is looking for talented social media copywriters and
strategists to join our digital team at our Chicago headquarters.

We’re going to run the most effective, creative, and innovative
digital campaign in the history of politics, and our digital team will
be core to achieving the communications, fundraising, and organizing
goals of the cause.

Our social media team will help tell the story of the campaign and
move people to take action over Facebook, Twitter, and other social
networks.

We’re looking for writers who can tell stories in 140 characters or
less, put complex policy into Facebook-friendly terms, and help plan
and create original content that people will be compelled to share
with their friends.

A great candidate will be able to formulate a social media plan for
specific goals and audiences, write content for it with a clear,
consistent voice, and analyze outcomes to make the next campaign even
better. You should have a head for politics, a sense of humor, and
buckets of common sense.

We’ll be hiring people at all levels, from social media experts to
junior staffers. So whether you’re a seasoned digital veteran or are
new to the field but hoping to apply your skills to a worthy cause, we
hope to hear from you.

If you’re right for this team, the following should all be familiar to
you:

+ Copywriting for social media
+ Online campaigning
+ Project management
+ Twitter, Facebook, and emerging social networks
+ Social media management and analytics tools

Salary will be commensurate with experience and qualifications; we
also offer a benefits plan.

To apply, please email your resume and a note explaining why you’d be
a good fit for our team to digitaljobs@barackobama.com.