U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Stephen Murphy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 Dr. Teri Lesesne is brilliant, of course, and I’m always eager to read what she has to say! This post about new, “personalized” leveling apps (October 2014) is en point as usual! They seem to be just a new twist on an old, and wrong-headed system. It’s just the latest take on restrictive reading as in the AR of old!

I can see that being able to have all students in a room read a common article at a comfortable reading level could facilitate discussion, and by extension, deeper comprehension of the topic at hand. I suspect that in most classrooms where it took hold though, it would be wildly overused and abused–because it’s easy on the teacher! And most teachers are sooo slammed for time that they will snap up anything that promises to make their task surmountable.  I also wonder what is left out of the easier reading levels, and I wonder what those kids will be missing that might have inspired them. Aren’t these struggling readers the very students that we most want to inspire to keep reading? Is it really an “equal” experience for all?

Why not employ some other scaffolds first, rather than laming up the experience for a whole segment of our class?  (see Lesesne’s Reading Ladders or this article by Todd Finley)  These methods might be more accessible to our kids, social-learning, collaborative & connected as they are!

tags:readinglevel AR lexile readingencouragement wildreader lesesne 4tchrs

• My Reading Habits — Rick Webb — Medium

  tags:4tchrs wildreaders readingencouragement

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thanks to @LarryFerlazzo on Twitter for calling attention to the great infographic below from DegreeScout. It compares US ed spending to other federal spending, such as defense, the War on Drugs, Food Stamp Overpayment, etc.

What’s wrong with this picture? The amount of money that is declared as “Unreconciled Transactions” (2003) is roughly HALF of what we spend on education! That’s the best that we can do? Every two years, we lose track of (or fail to report) more money than we spend on our children’s education in any 12-month period? Wow.

Think of that in household budget terms.  Unreconciled Transactions being equivalent to the loose change that my family loses in the couch and under the car seats, we would only be able to spend about $50/year on our daughter’s education! I think her college owes me a refund, btw…

I’m not sure the image I’m trying to embed below is working right, so if it’s a mess, go to the link above and take a look at this infographic. It’s very enlightening.

Created By DegreeScout Online Schools

I’ve seen Coveritlive on so many people’s blogs, that I decided to try it myself just to see what it was all about. Below is a test–I’m leaving it here only to remind myself that it’s a tool that could be very useful. I’m thinking of instances where some of my colleagues can’t come to a particular meeting and need to be caught up on the latest directives from the district! This would be useful. Obviously it is highly useful for live conference blogging too. Very cool and easy.

Funny…Couldn’t help linking to it…

Search LOLcats google!

Belatedly, I’m experimenting with Voicethread this week. It really is a great tool, and as I’ve learned from the developers’ many visits on various edtechtalk podcasts, they have proven to be wildly responsive to the needs of educators–even to the point of creating an entire new service ( ed.voicethread.com ) for educators unable to access the original site on their campuses. Wow!

I have experimented with putting short comments from students in a voicethread celebrating my school’s 30th anniversary.

Cute! And relatively simple.
As the students and I have created this voicethread this week, my teachers have watched–and some have shown some interest in learning how to do it themselves. I find this encouraging, in that our high-stakes tests begin next week and most of our teachers are so stressed that they can hardly sleep at night!
Anyway, the process wasn’t flawless, but I think it was a good thing in the end–a chance to make the point (to the adults watching, mainly) that it’s not insurmountably hard to use, and that it’s ok to try new things and have them turn out less than 100% perfect!

I think the project so far is cute, and the students have enjoyed it. I hope it generates some creative ideas in the classes too!