In How to Take Smart Notes, author Sönke Ahrens makes the case that note-taking is not just for capturing information but for clarifying and generating thoughts. Ahrens provides insights and techniques to use notes as a tool to truly enhance learning. The book in three sentences The book outlines slip-boxing, a note-taking workflow where you…
Quick Summary In his latest book “A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back”, security expert Bruce Schneier explores how people with power, influence, and technical skills can exploit systems for their own gain. He provides insight into the hacker mindset and how regular people can fight back…
Quick Summary Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life provides a nuanced examination of how emerging technologies like AI, cryptocurrencies, and self-driving cars are impacting society. Author Adam Greenfield analyzes the complex ethics, economics, and psychology involved. Extended Summary The proliferation of new technologies is fundamentally changing how we live, work, and interact. In his…
This week I’m presenting a workshop focused on reading and supporting students as they interact in classes. Do you ever wonder how or if students read the 200-300 pages of materials assigned a week across all their classes? Why do students have difficulty answering questions about course reading, even if they’ve read the materials? This…
Several years ago, I was explaining to a colleague the challenges I was having in teaching my class on content area reading and writing. For those that are not literacy educators, this is a class that is taught to (primarily) middle grades and secondary teachers across different content areas (math, science, social studies). In this…
As protests continue to roll around the globe in response to the unjust murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other People of Color, many of us are trying to identify meaningful ways to enact real change. These events demonstrate the ongoing patterns of systemic and institutionalized racism that impact African Americans…
Critical literacy is one of the key perspectives that informs my teaching, research, and thinking. It informs all of the work that I do, and fundamentally impacts everything from the ways in which I view the world, to the very tweets that I send out on a daily basis. It plays a role in guiding…
When we are working in an online, hyperlinked environment, a search engine no longer determines what we read. Instead upvotes, shared links and proprietary algorithms mold our meaning making and they play an essential role in what we access across a variety of platforms. Comprehension occurs in the cloud, as we increasingly crowd-source our text…
I’ve spent a lot of time recently writing about how I use Hypothesis in my own research and writing, and also in my classes with students. In various blog posts here on this website, and also videos on my YouTube channel, I’ve detailed how and why I use this as an assessment, and tool to…
A central challenge for educators today is that students do not always think critically about information they encounter online. Research has raised questions about the ability of students to evaluate online information. Quite simply, many students appear not to have the evaluation skills and strategies to succeed in this environment. Apparently, students mistakenly trust information…