On page 28, Franki writes about how Ben’s booktrailer experience was far different from her own. I feel that the key to this was what she highlighted - that he chose to share about his book that way. This is important for me to keep in mind in library - to be sure students have choice. A further point is that I hope that when students do choose to share their learning, that others actually look at it, comment on it, and learn from it. Because if not, then it ends up as being that “doing school” again.
I think Pernille Ripp said it best in her presentation at ISTE when she spoke about making sure her students’ voices were heard outside the four walls of her classroom. They need real audiences, not just hers as the teacher. She blogs with them, uses Twitter hashtags such as #commentsforkids, the Write About it site and much more. Her students are making choices and are empowered and their learning shows.
The last section of Chapter 3 where Franki writes about how her literacy work is integrated with the tool that matches it best (p. 42) really made me stop and think. This is a pretty simple idea, but so often, my first instinct is to do a mini-lesson on how to something instead of just using the tool as part of the reading or writing that is being done together.
Chapter 4 made me smile because I loved how the authors are writing about digital reading, but do not simply include texts with writing. Our world and students use media of all types - images, video, audio, texts - and synthesize all of these as they learn. I believe this is another area that many of us need constant reminders about, because print texts are what we are accustomed to and it will take a fair amount of reflection and intentionality to include them all as we work with our students.
Chapter 5 - Connectedness - my students expect it now. If they have a question about a book, they know we will tweet the author. Flipgrid is another terrific tool (see Andy Plemmons’ website http://expectmiraculous.com/ for amazing uses) to connect. Here is an example I did with my Kindergarteners this fall: http://bit.ly/1V0K8K1.
Digital Text Sets - What an interesting way to think about being connected. Franki’s description of her community study was amazing. So many different resources used and so many experiences because of the choices she made.