New Tools for Interactive Fiction and Engaged Writing | Edutopia Students were using interactive fiction tools to reimagine American Revolution battles as text-based adventures, written from the second-person perspective. Interactive fiction is essentially a computer-based version of Choose Your Own Adventure books, in which the reader has agency regarding a story’s multiple, threaded outcome. I…
Here is a look at the top posts and shared items for the week. ⓔ Who is gutsy enough to use The Most Dangerous Writing App in their classroom Self destructing text if you stop typing? What’s not to love? ⓔ Email subaddresses (plus aliases) in GMail (and others) A post from almost a year…
The Most Dangerous Writing App is a web based applications for writing a rough draft. What sets it apart from other writing apps is the fact that if you stop writing for more than 5 seconds, everything is deleted. Using the app is simple, select a time limit for the writing session and hit start. …
Reddit is a curious beast. It’s an online discussion forum where people can congregate around particular topics. Although I would be cautious using Reddit with students (the language and topics can most definitely be inappropriate), teachers may find it a good resource to find answers to tough questions or to catch up on news. Here…
School Library Budgets Rise 20%, Yet Challenges Remain | Spending Survey 2016 | School Library Journal Yet funding levels remain far below 2010–11, when school library budgets averaged $10,348 and the median, $7,000. Furthermore, the nearly 800 school librarians who responded to SLJ’s survey in January 2016 say they believe their budgets will fall an…
I tweeted out this morning that the term app smashing should die, but, in the span of a tweet, it is hard to articulate why. We’ve done what is currently called “app-smashing” since the dawn of time. Houses weren’t built with only one tool, you “app-smashed” several tools, like a hammer and saw, to create…
Wikipedia has a built in feature to create ebooks directly from the website. This is a great way to curate information for your class and distribute in a format that can be read offline or on various handheld devices. To get started, head to Wikipedia and look on the left side of the screen under…
It’s been almost two years since I last posted about Pocket, and it’s still a very important tool in my arsenal today. Pocket is a service that can save articles from the web for you in a format that’s easy to read. I use Pocket in a couple of different ways: to save longer articles…
Amazon released a new Kindle this week, the Oasis. At 3.4MM thick and 4.6 ounces in weight, it is over half the weight of an iPad mini and almost 50% thinner (44.3% if you want to be pendantic). The downside is that it is $290. But, who buys a black and white Kindle? Readers I…
9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us – Will Richardson Lately, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with our unwillingness to acknowledge these “elephants in the (class)room,” if you will, because the new contexts for modern learning forged by the networked world in which we now live are creating an imperative for new ways of…