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"Until recently, we have always had a big bowl of Legos on the conference room table. They are great to 'toy' with when waiting for folks to gather rather than have our noses buried in our mobile device screens. There are folks that can look at a pile of Legos and see a fire engine waiting to be built. There is the rest of us that see a lot of fun lockable color blocks."

"These are my notes (Wes Fryer) from Lucy Gray's breakout session, "Exploring YouTube," on August 7, 2012, at the Blackfoot Educational Technology Conference in Missoula, Montana. Resources from Lucy's presentation are available on this blog post. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS."

"The point was simple: The more frequent the update in direction, the easier it is to adjust and locate one's goal. Even if the student had a serious disadvantage (i.e. the professor could scurry away), the feedback loop was sufficient guidance. Take the analogy back to academic assessments: How often are students updated about their performance in a typical class? How informative is feedback? Assessment software is not the answer. It is only a component. The underpinning instructional strategy necessary to capture technology's potential to accelerate learning is a micro formative assessment. We need to integrate small checks for understanding into almost every stage of our classroom agendas. And it can't be a teacher asking students, "Does that make sense? Any questions?""

The time between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next is a season for reflection and renewal. It's important to celebrate student successes and recall challenging times when things just didn't go as planned. This season between school years is an opportunity to plan for new and modified instructional approaches to increase learner success. What follows are suggested readings and resources for developing and deepening your practice to meet the diverse needs of all learners. The readings are grouped from easy starts to deeper complex implementation. Like Steve Jobs, feel free to choose what captures your passion.

Some people can read instructions on how to do things and can immediately go out and do them without any problems. But others need to see things done before they fully grasp how to do them. This is fine if you know someone who can show you how to do things, but if you don't, it's a little harder. Enter the video tutorial.