One of my consistent educational mantras is that students have to read independently to get smarter. The stats on this are clear: According to the U.S. Department of Education, of the 8th-grade students who scored in the top one-quarter on a national reading test in 2011, 36 percent read for fun almost every day. Of the… Read more »
Posts Categorized: books
I read that book on my phone! Don’t remember it at all.
I can distinctly remember studying for finals in college and pouring over academic articles I’d read and carefully annotated. For certain material that I knew well, I could recall the specific place on the page where I’d read a fact or quotation–upper right corner, middle of the page, just after a chapter heading, etc. These… Read more »
“Little Brother” is Magic
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow My rating: 5 of 5 stars From time to time growing up, my dad has said something that’s been on my mind a lot recently: “Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” This is a book about the dark side of technological magic, and how the greatest wizards… Read more »
A Brief Introduction to eBooks, and How to Read them in a Web Browser (or on a Smartphone or iPad)
Your students need books that they will like reading. One way to get them those books is to hand them a hard copy. Another way, if you’ve got the right technology, is to give them an ebook. Anyone who has seen a Kindle is familiar with the basic idea of what an ebook is: it’s… Read more »
Hi, I'm Andrew Plemmons Pratt. I am the Program Manager for New Classrooms in Washington, DC. (Though opinions expressed on this site are entirely my own.) I taught 7th-grade English in Prince George’s County, Maryland as a member of the 2010 Teach For America corps. I write about literacy & edtech here—along with stuff like industrial archeology and bread baking.