Last week I was in the Pacific Northwest for video and classroom

visits. I stayed with my friend Joan for part of the trip. I had

my own guest bedroom and bathroom at her home, and she couldn't be

a more gracious hostess. One morning I pulled out a towel from the

pile in the bathroom closet, and couldn't believe my eyes when I

saw what was behind the towels. I pulled out the entire pile to

get a closer look.

Sure enough, the deep closet was filled with. . .books. Stacks and

stacks of children's books, professional books, journals from

teacher organizations. Before you give me the World's Worst

Houseguest Award, please note that Joan gave me permission to share

this story, as an example of how both of our lives are overrun with

texts. (Besides, I'm sure most of us have far more embarrassing

things we could unearth in our bathrooms than professional books!)

Neither of us have tiny houses, and Joan also has a classroom full

of books with closets in school for storage. But there simply

isn't room any more for all the titles we already have, or want to

own. Unlike pleasure reading, it's difficult to recycle

professional books at thrift shops or used book stores. We could

spend hours with book swap services online, but who has the time?

And we never throw them out, because that would take up space in

landfills and seems like a terrible waste on all levels. So we

pass many along to friends who are teachers, who probably

eventually store them in their garages or guest room bathroom

closets, too.

Which is a long way of saying Joan and I both recently purchased a

Kindle, Amazon's eBook reader. We are surprised at how much we are

enjoying them from the start (and no, Amazon isn't paying me for a

testimonial, which is good because there are loads of things they

could improve on the device). The success of the Kindle, even

with its steep sticker price and fairly limited features and

selection of texts, tells me that many readers who love the feel,

smell, and look of real books are driven like Joan and me to try to

do something about the weight, space, and hassle of dealing with a

physical mountain of books.

I resisted buying an eBook reader for a long time, just as I

resisted email, cellphones, a TiVo, a DVD player, and pretty much

every major technological advance of the last 20 years. And yet

there is no question these gadgets have done more than make my life

easier - they have fundamentally changed the way I spend my time,

as well as my habits as a reader and writer.

This week Franki Sibberson begins a new year-long series at Choice

Literacy on technology for literacy teachers, Beyond Gadgets. I am

assuming most readers of the Big Fresh are far more savvy than I am

about technology, and have a better attitude about trying out new

hardware and software tools. But no matter your experience level,

technology is pushing all of us to think harder about how we define

literacy, and what students need.

The danger is that those of us who are adverse to new technologies

won't have enough of a voice in the debate about how technology

might change literacy in schools. The beginning point for Franki,

and most of us, is the same starting point we had for reforming

reading and writing instruction over the past generation. Start

with how technology has changed the way you read and write, share

those changes with your students, and then you'll start seeing a

roadmap for how your instruction might change.

We've also posted a terrific new article on critiques of strategy

instruction from Shari Frost, plus more as always. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

Free for All

Sometimes the pendulum swings so hard in education that it's hard

not to feel whiplash. Shari Frost considers critiques of

strategy instruction, analyzing what's valid and what's not in

attacks on the flurry of post-its in classrooms. This would be a

provocative read for a staff meeting or study group:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/853.cfm

Franki Sibberson begins her new year-long series Beyond Gadgets,

on integrating technology into literacy instruction, with a

reflection on how technology has changed her reading habits

dramatically over the past decade:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/850.cfm

I'm always on the hunt for useful short videos on the web, and Video

Jug has a terrific series of 3-5 minute videos explaining different

punctuation marks:

http://www.videojug.com/tag/punctuation

Thinkature is yet another free online brainstorming tool that

allows participants to collaborate from a distance. This would be a

helpful site for visual learners, as well as any sort of follow-up to

strategic planning:

http://wiki.thinkature.com/

We've posted our full slate of Choice Literacy Workshop summer and

fall events, including new offerings on middle school reading

instruction,word work, nonfiction in the intermediate grades, and

dealing with assessment data. These new topics are in addition to

our popular offerings from last year on CAFE assessment, struggling

readers, literacy coaching, and the literacy principal in action:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm

For Members Only

Mandy Robek finds a punctuation unit study with her 3rd graders is

a fun alternative to yet another genre study. Her feature includes

booklists of children's literature and professional texts:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/855.cfm

In this week's video, Pam Pogson leads her 6th grade students in a

discussion of how to edit for conventions. The focus of the lesson

is on creating personal spelling lists in writer's notebooks:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/566.cfm

We've posted a new Choice Literacy Cluster on Rereading Strategies,

with contributions from Max Brand, Aimee Buckner, Franki Sibberson,

and Karen Terlecky:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/856.cfm

Finally, don't forget to check out our new organizing tool for

members. "My Favorites Files" allows each member to save articles

to read later, write notes on features, or create individual files

of materials around topics and themes of your choice. We've

designed the widget so that it takes less than a minute to learn

how to use it. The brief tutorial on "My Favorite Files" is

available at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/846.cfm

That's all for this week!

Share this Article

del.icio.us  Digg  Reddit  Facebook  StumbleUpon  GoogleBookmark  Technorati  Furl