Tag Archives: reading

Technology for Teaching: This Semester’s Report

5 Nov

This post was updated a little bit and republished at PBS MediaShift on Nov. 14. Thanks to my editors there for the chance to take it to a wider audience!

Because of a couple of my past posts, people often find my blog when they’re looking for information on teaching with the iPad. So I thought I might give an update on the technology tools I’m using in my teaching and personal productivity this semester on various platforms. I’ve mentioned some of these before, but it’s interesting to track which ones have infiltrated my workflow permanently and which have failed to prove their utility (for my purposes, at least).

Long post, so please click on through to read more!

New MediaShift Post: Kids’ Magazines on the iPad

17 May
Child With Red Hair Surfing, after Lilla Cabot Perry

Photo by Mike Licht on Flickr.

I have a new story up at PBS MediaShift on kids’ magazines making the move to the iPad — or, in some cases, growing up solely for the iPad.

My favorite aspect of this piece is what I learned about how apps might enable kids to read socially — discussing stories with one another in a safe environment, contributing their own thoughts and ideas to the publication, developing their critical reading skills in entirely new ways:

“Children’s magazines are wonderful for creating a sense of community,” Letvin said. She anticipates a time when “digital magazines are able to do some of these things, including some social connections, particularly if it involves international contexts with other schools.”

Timbuktu includes a section called “Ask Auntie Rita” that uses letters from children. Favilli says they hope to open the section to readers’ letters in the next issue, which could be written by Timbuktu’s worldwide audience and submitted within the magazine app.
I love to think about the ways that these digital magazines might make kids better readers and also more globally conscious, connected citizens. There’s amazing potential here if publishers and educators can find the right ways to develop it.

Using Social Media to Teach Critical Reading and Writing Skills

25 Mar

I read some articles I’d saved to Instapaper while on the treadmill at the gym this week. Frustratingly, I had no Internet access while I was there, so I was forced into a rare state of readerly isolation.

Most of my reading these days is grounded in social connections. With the exception of the (mostly guilty pleasure) fiction I read in the evenings before bed, I read online all day, almost every day. I read things that have been shared by my Twitter and Facebook communities, or I find things on my own and consider whether to share them myself.

During my forced period of lonely reading, I recognized some of the skills that I have to apply during my social reading. It seems to me that these are exactly some of the types of awareness we try to cultivate in students who are developing their skills as readers and writers. Some of these are obvious, others maybe not so much.

The first set of questions to consider is based on a standard media literacy approach, applied in the social media context when we examine content shared by our contacts:

  • Who’s the source? Who shared the link, and who actually created the content? Are they connected? If so, does their connection matter? If not, why did my contact share this content? What’s his or her motivation to share, or his or her personal interest in this content? (See also Howard Rheingold’s advice on “crap detection.”)
  • What comment did my contact attach to the content? Why? Has it altered my interpretation of the content, and if so, how? Do I agree or disagree with my contact’s commentary? If there is no commentary, is there a reason why not?
  • What is the main point of this content? (When so much information flows forth from social media, we have to be able to quickly “get the gist” of what we choose to read more closely.) What is my reaction to it?

When I choose to retweet or re-share information, I have an additional set of considerations:

  • To which audience do I distribute this content? My Twitter and Facebook communities overlap by a few members, but are really quite different. I have to consider my audience’s interests and preferred content consumption styles in making this choice. The constant challenge to “think of your audience” issued to students in writing courses takes on an immediate relevance in social networks.
  • Do I distribute this link with my own contact’s commentary attached? How would my audience respond if so? (How might they respond just to my sharing of content from the contact him- or herself?)
  • If I substitute my own commentary, I must quickly summarize my response in a few characters, or I must responsibly shorten my contact’s commentary to be able to add my own. How do I best capture his or her response and complement it with my own? How do I respectfully disagree, if necessary, to maintain a civil tone in my network?
  • If I summarize the content of what I am sharing, how do I do so accurately? How do I also write my summary in an intriguing way, inviting my network to click on it themselves? (This is akin to good headline writing, and indeed, some instructors have used tweet writing as a way to teach headline writing skills.)

In this post, I’ve tried to make explicit some of the sophisticated interpretive skills required by active participation in social networks and sharing content. For those who diminish social media as mere narcissism or distraction (yes, they’re still out there), I challenge them to see these media as another place where students can develop their critical thinking skills, in many of the same ways we ask them to attempt in traditional reading and writing. This is a new format, to be sure, but an increasingly important one, and also a format in which students can find much that interests them personally.

Memorable Moments with iPad Magazines

10 Sep

A sample magazine shown in the Zinio iPad app.

What moments stand out most in my first few weeks of magazine reading on the iPad?

  • Positioning the iPad carefully against a pillow on my stomach while lying down, then carefully moving a fold of shirt out of the way so the pages wouldn’t hit it when I turned them. Yes. Really. Old habits die hard.
  • Flying immediately to jump pages, rather than getting lost in a jumble of un-numbered ad pages at the back. In the Zinio app, I tap the blue-outlined link to the continuation of the article, and I’m magically there. Ah.
  • Buying digital single copies of magazines I don’t subscribe to, just because I want to see how they look.
  • Trying hard to find digital subscription options for all my favorites, with about 60 percent success.
  • Being annoyed by digital subscriptions that cost more – sometimes far more, even double – than the discounted faculty print edition subscriptions that have spoiled me. (Economist, I’m looking at you.) Come on – help me be greener, without bankrupting me.
  • Wanting to tweet articles from digital replica magazines with no means of doing so easily. If magazines want to replicate the solitary experience of reading print, they’re doing a good job with these digital editions…but I’m used to social reading now, and I miss it when it’s not available.

My transition into digital reading has been an interesting experience, and it’s really just begun! I’m trying to be aware of my physical, psychological and intellectual reactions as I proceed further into the world of digital magazine readership. Have you noticed any side effects or unusual responses in yourself?

Starting Out with the iPad: Reading

25 Aug

It hasn’t transformed my life. But some things are changing.

I got my iPad last week, a few days before the start of classes. I immediately procrastinated on finishing my syllabi by spending the better part of an evening setting it up with apps and files.

I’ll focus in this post on how the iPad has changed my experience as a reader so far, and follow up next week with a post about using the iPad in teaching after I’ve had a few more classes to test it out.

Screenshot of my Pulse setup; these are the first 3 of 20 feeds I've chosen.

News. I set up the slick Pulse app with feeds of local news from my local newspaper, the state news from the Sacramento Bee, investigative stories from California Watch, and a variety of other tech, higher ed, and knitting topics. (Yes, there is such a thing as knitting news.) These feeds, in combination with a perusal of the New York Times, BBC and AP apps, pretty much satisfied my morning news needs.

I experimented the first morning after setting this up by reading the newspaper after completing this iPad news routine, and found in it little I’d missed – the obituaries, letters to the editor, local lifestyle news. And, I can tweet an article from my local paper directly from Pulse without having to go to my browser, find the story (if I can), copy and paste the URL to Twitter, etc.

I am still debating whether I want to continue my newspaper subscription, but probably will out of loyalty to local journalism. That loyalty is still victorious over my desire to be more green. We’ll see how long it wins out.

Magazines. This one is an easier call. My magazine subscriptions are all going digital ASAP. As they expire, I’ll shift them over to the digital versions. I think almost all of my subscriptions are accessible digitally, and since most of them are digital replicas anyway, I don’t feel I’ll miss much besides the weight in my recycle bin. Even those I used to keep around – such as the occasional copy of Yoga Journal for a particular sequence, handy to have in print by the yoga mat – can be more easily stored and located on the iPad, which sits on the floor just as well.

Books. I bought one book on the iPad through the Kindle app. I am a heavy user of my local library, which efficiently brings requested books to my nearest branch. The free use of library books is much more appealing to me than the purchase of digital books from Amazon or Apple (especially for guilty-pleasure fiction I will never re-read). The one book I bought has a library waiting list of 600 people at the moment, so I was willing to spend $8 for the Kindle edition to avoid months of delay.

Using the iPad. I find it comfortable to read on the iPad, despite its weight and backlighting. I like that even with my severe myopia, I can make the text big enough to read without glasses – something I haven’t experienced comfortably since about sixth grade. The only challenge is reading on my dining table, where I have to turn the overhead lights off due to glare on the iPad’s shiny screen. Otherwise, I love having so much reading material on one device.

How has the iPad changed your reading experience? Am I the only one ready to end the print subscriptions, despite a lifelong love of print magazines? Please tell me I’m not the only traitor to the medium out there.

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