I’m helping facilitate a wonderful series of video conferences this week and next in my school district, and I wanted to share a little bit of the excitement as students in Michigan connect with others in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma, and many other states! Read Around the Planet is a huge collaboration in celebration of reading that happens alongside many other celebrations in the U.S. and schools for “March is...

This post is long overdue, as I finished What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy by James Paul Gee more than a month ago, along with the other members of Book Club 106. It was a monumental achievement for me personally as I hadn’t ever read an “academic” text outside of required reading for courses. In fact, I haven’t read many books at all outside of required course readings for several years...

For anyone who may be in their mid 20s to late 30s, and grew up watching PBS, the following remixed and auto-tuned video may bring on sudden waves of nostalgia. Please be advised that those under the age of 12 may exhibit signs of confusion. Please ignore them, and then share how amazing Reading Rainbow was with them! But wait, there’s more! Although Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2006, Levar Burton has managed to revive the...

As part of my ongoing attempt to force myself back into regular reading habits (academic, fiction, or otherwise), I was excited to have a new voice added to the Book Club 106 discussion last week of James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy. Ben Harwood, a technologist with Skidmore College in upstate New York joined me to talk about chapters 3 and 4 of the seminal title from 2002 that explores...

Last night was the inaugural discussion for Book Club 106, the loosely organized online book club that I formed last month with the goal of forcing me to actually read a book, while enjoying a nice weekly chat with other curious educators. Despite the power being out at my place for more than two hours, and the Google+ Hangout for the event starting almost half an hour late, it was a terrific conversation! Two of the other book club...

There’s less than one week to go before the first discussion in what is increasingly my complex attempt to encourage the internet to force me to read a book. It started with the a simple concept; Ben doesn’t read books anymore (I’ve read 1 book this year cover to cover, and even that feels like a fluke), Ben wants to start reading more, so Ben has decided to put his shame out there publicly for the internet to see in hopes...