technology

Why the Kindle Keyboard is now the best Kindle for students

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon Amazon announced its new Kindle Paperwhite last week, and many people are crazy excited about getting their hands on one. (It ships Oct. 1.)

I plan on getting one, too, but it’s pretty clear that the Paperwhite will not be the best Kindle for students and teachers.

That title goes to the Kindle Keyboard.

Hey, you say, isn’t that a really old model? Why yes, it is. In fact, what was first called the Kindle 3 came out in 2010, an eternity ago in tech years.

But I still recommend the Kindle Keyboard as the one to get if you’re a teacher, and here are the two reasons why:

1. The Kindle Touch no longer exists. I used to recommend the Kindle Touch for the classroom. After all, students like touch screens. But the Paperwhite replaces the Touch. And the Paperwhite, despite its many strengths, has one huge problem.

2. The Kindle Paperwhite doesn’t have speakers. To save money, Amazon decided to take speakers off the new Kindle. This means that the Paperwhite doesn’t have the popular text-to-speech feature. This is fine for many readers, but it’s not OK for students who like audio support. I once thought that only students with IEPs would benefit from text-to-speech, but my experience has shown that all students appreciate the feature, especially with challenging texts. One student last year ripped through Pride and Prejudice, but only when she read the book with TTS support.

And that’s it! With the Kindle Touch being discontinued, and with the new Kindle Paperwhite lacking speakers and text-to-speech capability, the Kindle Keyboard is left as the best Kindle for students.

Even though some students may scoff at the physical keyboard and want something more modern, the Kindle Keyboard is still a sleek-enough device that will attract readers.

More important, the Kindle Keyboard is the most powerful device that is dedicated to reading. Sure, I’m tempted to move toward the Google Nexus 7, but that’s for another post, and besides, one of the best things about e-readers is that all you can do on them is read.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! favicon

technology

Even Google has trouble closing the digital divide

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon An excellent article in today’s New York Times highlights the intractability of the digital divide, even for tech giants like Google.

It’s a pretty sad story, actually. Last year, Google promised to supply Kansas City, including its schools and hospitals, with very cheap high-speed Internet. The project is called Google Fiber.

The company wanted to make sure that communities demonstrated their interest in the program. To assess interest, Google required a certain percentage of residents in a neighborhood to put down a $10 deposit in order for the community to get wired.

Although this policy sounded reasonable, Google has found that mobilizing poor and largely African American communities to sign up has not worked well.

A few of the problems:

1. The program requires a credit card,
2. The program requires an email address,
3. Forty-six percent of Africans currently do not use the Internet.

Kevin Lo, the general manager of the project, said that closing the digital divide was “absolutely a core part of our mission,” but added that “it’s unrealistic to expect that we can, in six weeks’ time, close the gap.”

Although Mr. Lo’s sentiment may be true, I believe that Google should have known about the digital divide in Kansas City and done more preparation work before heading into town. It’s great that the company wants to help out, but it looks like Google Fiber wasn’t well thought out.

And shouldn’t the Internet be a public resource, anyway? favicon

coaching

Coaching so far: Way easier, not as fulfilling

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon People have been asking: “So how’s your new job?”

I like it. I get to work with teachers and talk about reading all the time. Plus, there’s no anxiety on Sunday nights. Or papers to grade. Or parent phone calls to make. And I can go to the bathroom whenever I want.

But so far, coaching is not nearly as fulfilling as teaching. Whereas teaching is too much and too fast, coaching has been too little and too slow.

A quick comparison:

Teaching: 5-15 minutes of free time per day
Coaching: 60-90 minutes of free time per day

Teaching: 100+ human contacts per day
Coaching: 5-10 human contacts per day

Teaching: 1-2 hours of anxious feelings per day
Coaching: 1-2 minutes of anxious feelings per day

Teaching: 60 hours of work per week
Coaching: 40 hours of work per week

Teaching: 2-5% chance that something crazy will happen at any moment
Coaching: 0% chance that something crazy will happen at any moment

So what do you think? The comparison makes it seem like coaching is the better gig, right? For this year, the answer is definitely yes. I needed a slower pace so that I can pause for a bit and focus on where this reading thing will take me.

But there’s a simultaneous empty feeling. After 15 years, I miss the classroom, and I miss the students, and I miss the directness-of-purpose that teaching affords.

It’s been just three weeks, and I’m sure that coaching will pick up. But I’m afraid that it won’t be “enough.” The problem is, Full-time teaching is “too much.” favicon

everything else

Iserotope Extras now using Snip.it

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon Iserotope Extras — where you can find some of the best articles that I’m reading — is now using Snip.it instead of Bundlr. (Update: Extras is now The Highlighter.)

The services are similar, but I find that Snip.it has a slightly cleaner look, and it does a better job clipping an article’s full headline.

Plus, you can add comments on Snip.it (if you sign up), which is a good idea.

Let me know what you think. Do you like Snip.it, or should I stick with Bundlr? favicon

reading/teaching

Using think-alouds to teach reading

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon By high school, most teachers don’t help their students read better.

Instead, this is what typically happens: The teacher assigns a reading for homework, gives questions to answer, and then gets frustrated when students don’t complete the assignment. In exasperation: “Why don’t they read?”

The truth is, Students gave up reading a long time ago — for most of them, around the sixth or seventh grade.

The only way to bring reading back is to emphasize it, stay committed to it, make it public in the classroom, and teach students how to do it.

Think-alouds are my favorite way to inject real reading into the classroom. In a think-aloud, the reader shares her thinking while reading a text out loud. Instead of just reading the words, the reader stops to engage with the text and to monitor comprehension.

There are several types of think-alouds. Here are four:

1. Activating the reader’s voice. There are no “rules” to this one. The point is just to notice what you’re thinking while you read and to make those thoughts known.

2. Making meaning of a text. The emphasis here is to monitor your understanding, see what you understand vs. what you don’t, and to surface fix-it strategies that help you comprehend a text.

3. Emphasizing reading strategies. What do good readers do in addition to monitoring their understanding? In this think aloud, you focus on predicting, summarizing, connecting, questioning, and other strategies that skilled readers employ to get a deeper understanding of a text.

4. Focusing on content or research. Here you go into the reading with one question in mind to answer. You don’t comment on anything besides this central question. (This one is great for History and Science classes.)

At first, the think-aloud process is awkward for students. Some students may not yet recognize their “reader’s voice,” while others may spend most of their effort decoding rather than making meaning. Other students may feel vulnerable reading in front of others. (Creating safety is important.)

Even though they might be weird, think-alouds make reading public and right there in front of the classroom. We can no longer keep reading hidden. Our students’ struggle with reading will not go away if we don’t deal with it directly.

In the next weeks, my colleagues and I are going to be recording student examples of think-alouds. I’m excited to begin this process of making reading public. More to come! favicon