Obviously I’m a proponent of getting more technology into classrooms. But I’m also a believer in data-driven decision making. So I read with great interest Matt Richtel’s NYT article on the impact new ed tech has on standardized test score at schools around the country…. Read more »
Posts Tagged: literacy
Writing for Your Peers Makes Your Writing Better Than Writing for Your Professors
A fascinating tidbit of research from Cathy N. Davidson’s recent column in The Chronicle: Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism,… Read more »
Three Simple App Recommendations for Teachers with iPads
Simplenote simplenoteapp.com | Cost: free This is the what Lifehacker called the “holy grail” of cross-platform plain text syncing. The Simplenote web app does one simple thing: it stores plain text notes in the cloud. But it also has a brilliant API that allows 3rd-party developers to create applications that store and access notes linked to your… Read more »
Classroom Vision: Language is a Toolkit of Power
So one of the pieces of TFA pre-school work that I find really exciting is the “vision” we’re expected to lay out for the year. This is your classroom manifesto, your big call-to-arms for what you want your students to achieve, accomplish, think, or feel about learning. This is your inaugural address, except the only… Read more »
Read, Write, Rock Gets Preliminary Green Light (That Means iPads in Mr. Pratt’s Class!)
I met with my principals today and got spectacular news. They’re going to let me use some of the Gholson cache of iPads for implementing the Read Write Rock project for daily instruction. I owe a lot of folks thanks for their confidence and encouragement, which kept me asking after the resources. But the excitement… Read more »
30 Days of Creativity – Day 5 – What My Students Need
The TFA DC Region is piloting a new cohort led by the Director of Transformational Teaching. The idea is to have an interdisciplinary group of corps members work with the Teacher Support and Development Team to design new models for sharing resources and improving effectiveness for 2nd-year teachers. I’ll be honest: four months ago, I… Read more »
Hi, I'm Andrew Plemmons Pratt. I currently teach 7th-grade English / Reading / Language Arts at a turnaround school in Prince George’s County, Maryland. This year, my classroom is piloting a 1:1 iPad program designed to accelerate middle-school literary. I write about education technology here at appratt.com and at the EdTech 101 blog on . I'm a 2010 Teach For America corps member, and before that I was the managing editor at , the science and tech policy magazine at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, DC-based think tank.