Category: Academic Life
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The Future (Shock) is Now
Having been on my “to read” list for quite some time, I was finally able to dig into an oft-mentioned book: Alvin Tofler’s 1970 look at, well, today, Future Shock. I had not read it before, though I see one of his quotes mentioned quite often: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be…
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Announcing “From Texting to Teaching: Grammar Instruction in a Digital Age”
Today marks the release of my second book with my colleague and friend, Jeremy Hyler: From Texting to Teaching: Grammar Instruction in a Digital Age. Also, we are extremely grateful to Liz Kolb, who offered her endorsement of the book by writing the foreword. From the book’s description on the Routledge page: Don’t blame technology for…
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Foreword for “Applying the Flipped Classroom Model to English Language Arts Education”
Recently, my colleagues Clarice Moran (Kennesaw State University) and Carl Young (North Carolina State University) released their new edited collection – Applying the Flipped Classroom Model to English Language Arts Education. I was honored that they asked me to write the foreword from the book, which is available as a free download from IGI. Check out…
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4C’s Collaborative Comprehension Activity
The past week has found me presenting to both pre-service teachers (three times!) and to fellow faculty (just once), and with each audience I shared the same activity: the 4Cs for Collaborative Comprehension. Adapted from Ritchhart, Church,, and Morrison’s Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners, my spin on this particular…
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Marginal Syllabus Conversation – February 22, 2017 at 6:00 PM EST
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in Academic Life, Books, Collaboration, Connected Learning, Digital Reading, Educational Research, Hybrid Learning, Internet Research, Mobile Learning, New Literacies, News and Notes, NWP, Online Learning, Online Reading, Open Content, Professional Development, Reflections, Research Writing Rewired, Teaching, TPACK, WritingTomorrow, Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 6:00 PM EST, join my colleague and co-author, Dawn Reed, and me as we participate in an “Annotation Flash Mob” on the preface for our book, Research Writing Rewired. We’ve been invited to participate in this opportunity through Dawn’s collaborations with the Marginal Syllabus Project. The Marginal Syllabus team is…
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Can We Make Online (Graduate School) Discussions Suck Less?
As many of you know, and have probably experienced, discussions in online classes can be notoriously bad. At best, many online courses feign discussion as a pseudo-cooperative (and not a collaborative, generative) task, and students engage because they are required to connect with the content and with one another. At worst, the tasks are perfunctory and just…
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Reflections on the Digital Literacy and Higher Education Winter Symposium
My first draft, unfiltered thinking from the end of our day reflections: Of course, the opportunity to meet and greet is wonderful. As we have noted, it is easy to fall into “silos” in our academic roles, and being able to talk with librarians, media literacy scholars, education scholars, doc students, and others is always…
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Analyzing Our Own Social Scholarship Profiles
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in Academic Life, Books, CMU, Collaboration, Connected Learning, Crafting Digital Writing, Digital Writing Workshop, Educational Research, Hybrid Learning, Misc. Debris, Mobile Learning, MSU, New Literacies, New Media, News and Notes, Online Learning, Professional Development, Reflections, Teaching, WritingDuring our workgroup meeting this morning, Maria Ranieri has asked us to engage in an analysis of our own social profile(s), and to reflect on our decision to engage in social scholarship. For me, the choice to engage in social media began over a decade ago, while still in graduate school at MSU. The first…
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Rethinking a Wiki vs LMS for Course Design
Last year, when I first taught EDU 807, “Learning Tools in Education Technology,” one of my goals was to employ a wiki as a learning management system (LMS) so the doctoral students involved in the course could participate in a more open, collaborative form of social scholarship. I have long been an advocate of using…