Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Tag: reading

  • Title: Dear Google, You Should Have Talked to Me First [Link]

    Dear Google, You Should Have Talked to Me First writes:

    It’s a sad commentary on the state of education in the U.S. when a move like this is praised.

    To say I’m disappointed that Google views education through such a narrow lens is an understatement. For a company that has been built on innovation to invest millions into a program that levels books, awards points for low-level knowledge and comprehension, and creates bad data is a travesty.

    And you call this personalized learning? What’s personalized about letting a computer system match kids with books?

    You’re missing the point about what reading instruction should be, and you are helping to systematically destroy the joy in books.

  • Using an iPad with your reading workshop

    How Technology Can Support and Enhance Your Reading Workshop writes:

    As with most of my planning, I started with the end in mind. I thought to myself, “What if students could jot their thinking down, in real time, and receive feedback without interrupting the workshop?” Even if they didn’t receive feedback in the moment, could they at least jot their notes down to share at a more appropriate time? This is when I started using our reading notebooks in a more meaningful manner. I began to model “during reading” responses instead of only “after reading” responses. We began to use our notebooks in a more authentic way. After workshop, we would have rich, shared discussions.

    However, for everyone to have the opportunity to share would have taken too long. So, instead of having one child share at a time, I started utilizing partnership and small group sharing. This worked well, but not every child had the chance to grow from the group’s thinking. I wished there was a way that each child had a chance to share their thinking with the whole group. This way, the odds of receiving specific feedback that would be most beneficial would be enhanced. The more minds working together, the better.

  • My summer plans 2013

    I’m not going to let a little thing like summer already being 3 weeks in the past to stop me from making a few goals on what I want to do this summer. 🙂 And since I’m more likely to accomplish things if I write them down, I decided to post them here for all to see and to also keep me on track.

    1. Read three novels: The Great Gatsby, Catching Fire, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I usually get so caught up with non-fiction (including all my RSS feeds) that I don’t read as much fiction as I should. There really isn’t any particular reason for reading these, except for the fact that two of them have movies in 2013.
    2. Write an interactive fiction game in Inform 7. Interactive fiction may be somewhat of a dead genre but I think it’s a fascinating way to create a story. I bought Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 by Aaron Reed in September of 2010. I think it’s about time to put it to use!
    3. Create a Little Free Library. These are the book equivalent of take a penny/leave a penny.
    4. Finish my super secret web tool…. 🙂

    Is there anything you’re doing this summer?