Category: Reflections
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Designing Breakout Rooms for Maximum Engagement
Despite (or perhaps because of) the pandemic summer, I was provided with numerous opportunities to facilitate online courses and professional development, as well as one chance to work with a digital writing summer camp for middle school students. There were many models for these sessions, from a one-day event where we hosted about 60 participants…
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Appreciating Writing Assistance Technologies… Finally?
This post originally appeared on the National Writing Project’s “Ahead of the Code” blog on Medium on August 22, 2020. Appreciating Writing Assistance Technologies… Finally? You would think that, as English teachers, we would have been more appreciative. Even from the founding of our major professional organization, the National Council of Teachers of English, we…
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Pandemic Pedagogy: Some Questions About Being “Successful” and Getting it “Right”
Introduction With the midpoint of the summer and the July 4th Holiday weekend in the rear view, and states (like our own home of Michigan) now releasing plans for a “safe return to school” in August, we feel it is worth taking time to pause. As parents and teacher educators, as well as long-time colleagues…
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Pledge to Support #EducatorEquity
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So much has been said in the past few weeks since the death of George Floyd that any additional words would be wasted. So, let me get to the point. As we see protests in America and around the world, I feel the need to act. To that end, I am personally committing to three…
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Book Review: Learning First Technology Second in Practice by Liz Kolb
In my work with undergraduate pre-service teachers, graduate students in master’s and doctoral educational technology programs, and with teachers through webinars and workshops, a consistent question resonates — “I know I am supposed to use technology in my teaching, but I don’t exactly know how. What can I do?” And, for well over a decade,…
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Resources for ETA NSW
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in Academic Life, Argument in the Real World, Assessing Students’ Digital Writing, Assessment, Because Digital Writing Matters, Best Practice, Books, Collaboration, Composition, Connected Reading, Crafting Digital Writing, Create Compose Connect, Digital Writing Workshop, English Education, From Texting to Teaching, Hybrid Learning, Literacy, Mobile Learning, New Literacies, News and Notes, Online Learning, Open Content, Professional Development, Reflections, Research Writing Rewired, Teaching, Virtual Learning, WritingThis list of curated resources represents work that I have produced from March to May of 2020, all aimed at helping educators as they transitioned to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The full article. “Critical, creative, and compassionate: Resources for teaching English in an era of COVID-19” appears in Australia’s English Teachers Association NSW’s…
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Podcast with Ivy Ewell Eldridge on “Writing with Digital Tools”
While attending the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) conference in February, I was invited to speak with CNUSDEdChat. My thanks to the entire CNUSDEdChat team — Ivy Ewell-Eldridge, Annemarie Cortez, Kim Kemmer, Jenny Cordura, and Kate Jackson — for welcoming me to this conversation. Follow more of their work via their homepage, Soundcloud…
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Ideas from Instagram Live Conversation: “Online Teaching and Learning English”
Edited Post: Video added on May 30, 2020. Earlier today, I was honored to be invited by Alireza Qadiri Hedeshi, Dean of Foreign Languages Department at Mehryar Institution of Higher Education, for an Instagram Live conversation. Here are some of the questions that he and his colleagues shared, as well as some brief responses that…
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Resources and Reflections from “Online Environments and Your Students: Strategies to Inform Writing Instruction Webinar”
Earlier this afternoon, I was pleased to be on a webinar, “Online Environments and Your Students: Strategies to Inform Writing Instruction” (Archived Video) with Jessie Borgman (Arizona State University), and Casey McArdle (Michigan State University). Hosted by Brett Griffiths, Director of Reading and Writing Studios at Macomb Community College, we covered a good deal of…
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On COVID-19 (and the Moving of Courses from Campus to Cloud)
After conversations with colleagues and family in the past few days — and awkward pauses during a conference on Friday, moments which would have normally been filled with handshakes and hugs — I, too, felt compelled to write about the topic everyone is talking about. As we (collectively, read “we” here as “the education community”)…