NBPTS ELA Standards Public Commenting

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been working for the past few months as a member of the committee that is revising the ELA standards for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. For the next month, the current draft of the standards is open for public comment. I’ve spent significant time thinking through how I […]

Old Dogs, New Tricks, and the Pace of Learning

Except for my students, I probably learned more from Sadie than anyone else on a daily basis. Sadie was a 10 year old basset hound and she passed away unexpectedly late last month. She looked like this: I had clocked it one afternoon in June: it took Sadie and I 52 minutes to go around […]

Multiliteracies: Thinking “Beyond New London” (at DMLcentral)

My latest post at DMLcentral is about the future of literacy research. I am interested in collaborating with other stakeholders around the question of how are literacies shifting currently. Though the text is cross-posted below, please consider commenting over at DMLcentral to continue this conversation.   Multiliteracies is an area of interest for me and my classroom, and I […]

Doing Things Correctly on Google Plus: Social Networks, Youth Practices and What Educators Need to Know about Appropriation

Part of my current ongoing goal of this blog is to provide a continuing understanding of social networks and their role in the shifting nature of the new culture of learning. While I’ve only played with it for two weeks at this point, I can say that Google Plus (Google+) is a significant step forward […]

Thinking Through Literary Interconnectedness and Dissertation Format (Another Cheap Rehash: Sonic Nurse Album Review)

Working through analysis, I had a (brief and fleeting) moment of clarity in terms of structure of the dissertation and the opportunity to strengthen a literary reading of critical instantiations of student agency within the community. And while I’m still wading knee-deep into this theory building component of my dissertation, I was reminded of a […]

Your Summer Syllabus: Three Recent Examples of Participatory Media that Teachers Should Know About (Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy Ahead)

My browser is overcrowded with tabs of information I want to share here. Instead of focusing on a single example, I want to briefly reflect on three different aspects of the shifting nature of culture in participatory media: community, copyright, and civic engagement. By looking at all three of these, educators can get a quick […]

Transitions: Manual Arts, The Department of Education, and Stepping into the Productivity of the Summer

Thursday was the final day of the school year at Manual Arts. It was the end of a very long year with significant changes. As the students left the school, they walked away from a campus that has been under constant operation for nearly a decade. This will be the first summer since I’ve worked […]

Praising the Voice

So I’m kinda into The Voice. A week in a hotel + Hulu = completely caught up and officially rooting for Beverly. I was hooked by the blindfolded recruitment phase. In some ways it reminds me of the process of entering the realm of academia: reviewing writing and intellectual ephemera, top-of-the-field professors recruit graduate students […]