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"My children (16, 18, 20) are writing more and more. Their friends do too… Probably not in the way some of you can imagine… nor think of as writing…but nonetheless they are writing. They are texting… 8000 texts (per month) sent and received… Can you imagine probably 5-10 words on average per text…40,000 -80,000 words per month: A collaborative monthly story of their lives in WRITING!"

"Humanities teacher, Shannon Hancock, at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, read and worked through The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo with her 8th grade students. Not only did they read the text, learn about literary elements, but also learned to articulate and discuss in a professional manner the text with their peers. Shannon chose to use the Socratic Method, specifically a Socratic Seminar (Inner/Outer Circle Fishbowl) to hand the learning over to her students. She stressed to them: " Educators don't need to have all the answers, it is about asking the right questions.""

"In another post, Embedding Visuals Into Teaching and Learning, I looked at ways to support our students' ability to navigate a media rich world and "read and write" in that world. I shared how teachers could easily and quickly create visuals, that supported a question they wanted students to explore, break up long and monotone passages of text, review a concept discussed abstractly or make a real life connection. Wonderopolis is a fascinating site with great visual prompts for you to "hook" students into inquiry and further research."

"The Situation: I am working with Middle School students (Grades 6-8 - 11-13 year olds) at Graded, The American School of Sao Paulo, Brazil. One of the vision of our division is to create student blogfolios (Digital Portfolios on a blogging platform) to encourage and support sharing and documentation of learning artifacts and to receive authentic global feedback. We are just at the beginning of our journey to use the blogs to document and reflect. Specifically… Our 8th graders have written a "This I Believe" essay, which they are "upgrading" from a text base essay to a video or audio presentation using images, video or sound to not just "enhance with technology" but to truly transform a reader's/viewer's experience."

"I am thrilled to see so many students creating blog posts and going BEYOND "writing" text made up letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Being able to "read" and "write" in other media is part of becoming fluent in media literacy. In addition to media literacy, knowing your rights and responsibilities as an ethical digital citizen is a vital part of participating in our digital world. My frustration with educators not knowing about observing copyright when producing content online was expressed in a previous post titled No! You Can't Just Take It!. I see sprinkled attempts of students trying to "do the right thing", but coming up short many times. This is all part of the process for students, but frustrating when they do not receive any feedback from a teacher of how to correct the behavior."

"cross posted with permission from Dr. Silvana Meneghini,'s On The Edge Blog. Silvana, the High School Technology Coordinator at Graded, The American School of São Paulo, shared a How-To post to connect augmented reality to student reflection by adding a layer of learning (not technology for technology sake). I highly recommend adding her blog to your RSS reader and following her on Twitter to connect with her learning and teaching journey. Enjoy Silvana's post below: Augmented Reality allows you to expand the experience of the real world with information, video, sound, GPS data, and so on. If well utilized, it can be much more than just another cool tech thing… You will see below an example of how Augmented Reality was used to expand the experience of visitors to our school's Art Exhibit. As students had to reflect on and verbalize their artistic choices, an augmented reality layer was created for viewers of the exhibit. In the process, students were excited about sharing with an authentic audience and had to really recall and reflect. It created a hyperlinked reality that enabled amplification of the viewers' learning experience that was much more engaging than text."

'I confess, I am a visual learner! I also relate better to metaphors, since they paint a picture in my mind."

"Digital Portfolios have intrigued me for a while. I had a preconceived notion about what a portfolio was, an accumulation of work that demonstrated accomplishments, an analogy to a photographer's photo album which showcased his best images…"

Great infographic from makeuseof.com

"You must have noticed that I have been reading and re-reading "Curriculum 21″ by Heidi Hayes Jacobs. I have posted my first impressions and recommendation here and since then have joined and written about the companion Ning to the book here. I created a Flickr Curriculum 21 group to have a hub for images and videos of Curriculum21 teaching and learning examples."