Reading the World: 1. Nigeria

I

In an effort to help students grow as readers, we conference one-on-one about their choices. How they find books. What they like, don't like, want to try next. So much of the reading in my classroom is driven by choice.

Some conversations drift towards goal-setting. Specifically, we discuss reading books by authors from different parts of the world or books based on characters from diverse cultures. We discussed noticing authors: where they were from, what was unique about their life experience, and what details made it into the authors' bios.

It was a new way for some of my students to find books. And some found it an interesting challenge.

Swallowing my own advice, I decided I wanted to read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It would be--as far as I knew--my first novel by a writer from Nigeria. It arrived and took a space in my book pile beneath my standard, comfortable fare of nonfiction and contemporary fiction: Napolean: A Life by Andrew Roberts, H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, et al. I have enjoyed the 12 books I have read since early June.

And then I started Americanah. For the first 75 pages I felt uncomfortable. At arm's length. Painfully aware of my inability to connect with the characters or the experiences of an African getting one's hair braided in America, I felt impulses to abandon the book.

I stuck with it because the discomfort of not knowing is ultimately what I want to coach my students to overcome. Exposure to fragments of the world--even if it is through a novel--is desirable.

As Americanah developed, I found my reading gaining momentum. In the back of my mind I forgave my lack of comfort and just let the story take me with it.

By the time I reached the last 100 or so pages I took breaks to browse for my next uncomfortable book--the next book to stick a finger in my chest--the next book to challenge me to look out and abroad. To pay better attention.

I found Ann Morgan's blog, A Year of Reading the World where I was introduced to a word which described my reading habits: anglocentric. Ann Morgan wrote this about herself and I connect with her. I can admit this about myself and seek to change it.

Ann challenged herself to read at least one book by an author from all 196 countries. On her blog she lists all of the books she read by country. And so, now, I will start to work my way through the As and order my first few selections to start blending into my book pile.

Multicultural literature goes largely untouched in my classroom even though I have several dozen selections of diverse books on a clearly identified shelf.

And even though my students have written about their own cultural backgrounds and family histories, and I have book-talked multicultural titles, man of my students's reading lives also look anglocentric.

The challenge is bigger than me, but clearly, the challenge starts with me. I need to be a better model.

I am wondering how multicultural or diverse books do in other classroom libraries? And I am wondering what people discover about the reading choices of their own students or children? Do we contribute to the anglocentric reading model? Is it avoidable? And, if I can ask just for the sake of conversation, is the problem I am alluding that it may be?

Clearing the Way for Reading

My classes responded to a question posed by Nanci Atwell, [Since September] What 10-12 books do you love so much that you think they might convince an 8th grade girl/boy who's a lot like you--except that she/he doesn't read much--that books are great?  After compiling the responses of 120 students, over 460 separate self-selected titles, the chart above shows the most mentioned titles and/or authors--actually, many students were adamant that they be able to simply list Sarah Dessen, John Green, and Sophie Kinsella simply as authors since anything written by them is gold to my adolescent readers

The fact that kids, mine at least, are reading series stands out to me--yet, my classroom library is largely built on individual, stand-alone, novels.

By the same token, over 330 novels were only mentioned once--what a testimony to the varied tastes of our young readers!

It all helps underscore what I've read recently--it takes a few thousand titles to build a classroom library capable of serving the needs and tastes of our kids. While I continue to spend my own money the sheer numbers are daunting!  While I have the means to keep adding to my classroom library it makes me wonder how many other classrooms sit empty because teachers and schools do not have the means to help build these necessary reading zones.

Kids are reading--whether we want to qualify it as deeper reading, meaningful reading, doesn't matter to me in this moment.  My revelation in this moment is that they are reading--and will read if we give them a chance to read.

While some classrooms may not financially be able to provide the books for a reading zone, I lament when I read and hear is that educators do not have enough time to cover curriculum and promote independent reading--testing, curriculum, and our perceptions and individual beliefs as teachers that we are preparing students for the next grade twists upon and around itself.

Self-selected and independent reading is choked.

After 18 years I can reflect and know that I shared in all of those concerns and have allowed those concerns to be in the way...their way. Kids will read if we let them...if we encourage them.

My students took my Moodle poll this week--"How many books have you read since September?"

23 report reading fewer than 10 (19%)
42 report reading between 11-20 (35%)
33 report reading between 21-30 (28%)
13 report reading between 31-40 (11%)
7 report reading 41+ (6%)

With only light encouragement, guidance, and structure, my kids read.  I'm not perfect at it by any means, but I am aware that I can help my kids read...and I can be better at it next year.  I need to be better at it next year.

If I can help clear the way.

YA Book Review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Monster is metaphor. Monster is metaphor for cancer.

Monster is metaphor for the fear and sadness haunting those who watch loved ones slip away--for coming to terms with loss.

Monster is metaphor for the truth.

In A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, a yew tree visits an adolescent boy at midnight. In the spirit of A Christmas Carol, this monster comes to tell the boy three stories so that afterwards the boy can tell the monster his own story--a true story. A very hard to admit story. A story built on words so awfully difficult to say--what he can't bring himself to say to his dying mother: "I don't want you to go."

I need to take a step back and put the book into context--Ness wrote the book for author Siobhan Down, who lost her bought with cancer in 2007. A Monster Calls was inspired from notes she compiled for a fifth book. As Ness shares in the Author's Note, "This would have been her fifth book. She had the characters, a premise, and a beginning. What she didn't have unfortunately, was time."

Additionally, the illustrations by Jim Kay enhance the jagged darkness of the tale. A combined effect of etchings, wood cuttings, and collages, they strike me as cross between Jackson Pollack meets Andrew Wyeth meets Lynd Ward.

A wave of YA literature had been tackling heavy issues--issues that consume the curiosity of some adolescents. A Monster Calls deals with the stomach-wrenching reality of losing a loved one to cancer so respectfully and plainly, that this should be thought of as healthy read.

Literature is often the way into difficult topics--the great leveler when we do not have the words ourselves. I think of music as the place where so many people, particularly teens, turn for moments of shared heartache, joy, loss, etc. How often did we, as teens, sit alone in our rooms singing lyrics, following the lyrics on an album jacket or CD cover? YA has been bravely taking on that mantle as well in the unique way that only literature can provide--this novel continues that impressive and welcome trend.

A superb piece of art, and a sensitive approach to encouraging conversation with adolescents about one aspect of our humanity, I strongly recommend A Monster Calls for your classroom library.







View all my reviews

Money, Wedges, and Literacy: What the Common Core Missed

Abstract

"The Common Core" distracts educators away from a pressing need: training in digital literacy.  Access to technology is access to power.  Without training and resources education continues to drive a larger wedge between the haves and have-nots.  With, at best, a casual mention of digital literacy, the Common Core ensures only one thing—as the Digital Renaissance evolves we are all at risk of being left behind.

What the Common Core Missed

As Digital Literacy provides access to information—and access to power—this Digital Renaissance exposes the haves and the have-nots in our country.   While education must always remain pedagogy-driven, society’s immersion in technology can not be ignored by educators.  Without the correct training and focus on a Common Core built on the needs of this society, teachers will no longer be able to help students unlock their futures.

Teachers need immersion and training in technology in order that students may have immersion and training in technology.  Technology passes books as the access point to information and power.  In a 2008 PEW study, researchers learned that the primary source for research done at or for school is the internet: 94% of teens use the internet at least occasionally to do research for school and nearly half (48%) report doing so once a week or more often.  Without a revised Common Core, we are in danger of contributing to an even greater divide of haves and have nots—and it isn’t all about having the money to supply the technology.  Permitting a culture of teachers of haves and have-nots is my greater fear—those who have the comfort, experience, and training to immerse themselves and their classes in digital literacy and those who simply have not.

Technology is largely taught in isolation.  Computer rooms grow in our schools while other classrooms are lucky to house one or two computers.  This Sex Edification of technology contributes to an educator’s fear or resistance.  Rather than synthesize digital tools with real-world applications and core curriculum, the digital tools sit on tables like $1,000 encyclopedias or typewriters.  Just like Sex Ed, we tend to believe "someone else will teach it" and do so in isolation.

The fact is, we are online.  We are digital readers.  We are digital writers. All roads intersect and we have redefined Digital Reality with people.  Within the last decade Digital Reality shifted from a game played on an LED battlefield to a way of life.  In many ways, we live every moment of our lives in a digital reality because the world is making more land—a digital landscape.  Yet instead of training educators, young and old, to engage inspiration and inventiveness, American politics burns the digital landscape right from under our feet, almost as fast as it can be created, with the oversights of the Common Core.

The axiom good writing is good writing will never be displaced.  Whether we teach with chalk, white board markers, or Smartboards (which some will consider outdated by the way), the fundamental truths of reading, writing, and arithmetic remain among the few constants in education, yet we stand on the frontier of a Digital Revolution and the national plan is fragmented and weak...actually, there is no plan. With only a too casual yawn and nod at technology, the Common Core nudges educators to rewrite curriculum built on international testing standards.

We can’t just leave using technology and digital literacy to the whim of individual teachers—yet this is what the Common Core establishes.

Common Core Oversight #1: No specific mention or acknowledgment of digital literacy

Without the appropriate level of leadership and training, computer labs can best be labeled technology dumps as educators are left to decide for themselves—depending on their school’s budget and climate—how best to incorporate technology in the classroom.  For what we do and produce in our American classrooms, Underwoods, hardback encyclopedias, and tri-folds are currently just as effective as computers—given two classes, one with technology and one with typewriters, books, and cardboard, we would see little difference in the products between the classes.

Until there is a common training program and goal built on digital literacy, educators will continue to use new technology in old ways because the old ways are rooted in the financial soil of testing and achievement.  What message is reinforced when our schools receive Race to the Top funds and selective waivers from the No Child Left Behind requirements all in the name of carrying the torch for the Common Core?  What incentive exists to grow with the technology?  How will we ever expect educators to see new technology as anything other than a digital poster, encyclopedia, or way to type and print? 

In reality, we will fail our students when it comes to digital literacy and this new access to power.

Education is failing—we are failing to be led.  We are failing to be supported.  We are failing to be recognized for all that we achieve with technology in spite of the “you’ll figure it out” model.  Buttressed by the financial obligations of Achieve, Inc., the ACT, and the College Board,  the Common Core supports the testing business.  Who is in the business of supporting, leading, and recognizing educators? Who is in the business of supporting and leading technology use in education?  Educators.  I assure you, we will figure it out.  Yet, along the way, we fight district by district for what we need, to overcome the inequities from school to school, and only if we’re lucky and blessed some of us fight to bring American education into the Digital Renaissance.

Common Core Oversight #2: Reading

The Common Core does little to encourage adequate growth and progress of technology use in the K-5 Reading Plan.

Listing no formal digital reading expectations among its Foundational Skills, the Common Core mentions in its Reading Standards that students should analyze how writing is affected by different modes, particularly multimedia.  A modest, but promising start considering “multimedia” does not explicitly mean digital.  Multimedia can mean photography, a poster, a set of slides.  Depending on the whim, comfort, or training of the teacher, an informed exposure to digital reading may never occur for many students.

Additionally, and equally as distressing, in the Common Core Reading Plan, from the 6th through 8th grades, students are asked to compare and contrast different forms, including multimedia. Even if I imply “multimedia” as digital and online, it does not mean others teachers will—education outgrows that word on a daily basis. 

Digital reading for citizens and consumers in our society is a non-negotiable skill. It is a must-have. Perhaps this dearth of digital reading is a reflection of the comfort level that our Common Core designers have with the K-8 age range handling costly digital hardware.   Perhaps they have well-founded fears of elementary and middle school students seeing pornography or graphic violence on the internet.  Perhaps the focus in K-8 should be more on the skill of analysis than the digital vehicle through which the analysis occurs.  This is plausible until we consider the next phase in the Common Core progression.

Sadly, from 9th-12th grade there are no digital (or multimedia) reading expectations.  There are no expectations for students to interact with what they read digitally.  There are no expectations to instruct students in how to be a savvy digital reader and consumer.  None.  Zero.  Digital reading, disguised or misinterpreted as multimedia, ends at the 8^th grade.  In our Common Core, digital literacy may never develop for some of our students. 

Is this plan driven by pedagogy and the needs of an emerging societal shift?  Or is it the architecture of a financially asphyxiated team regarding education through test-colored lens?

Common Core Oversight #3: Writing

Heroically, the anchor standards for writing in the Common Core ask students from the fourth grade through high school graduation to “use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.”

The focus words are produce, publish, interact, and collaborate—no explicit mention of achieving these things digitally other than through use of the Internet.  While the Internet is one important acre of the emerging digital landscape it does not cover everything.  Suggesting Internet equals digital literacy is already an old-fashioned understanding of technology; I’m reminded of Rupert Murdoch sounding out of touch recently as he railed against Google as an Internet pirate.  An illustration of just how confused people in power can become; we so often mistake the size of someone’s bank account for the breadth of one’s knowledge.

Educators are forced to imply the word “digitally” within the expectations of the Common Core—but what happens when that is not implied?  The problem with the language in the Common Core is that “digital” is implicit and therefore this aspect of the Common Core is open to the vagaries of a teacher’s digital comfort level. 

For example, if I show my students a sample of an essay (on the internet), and then students brain storm ideas face to face while hunting for topic ideas (on the internet), then type a paper on a laptop while checking my requirements for the assignment on our school website (on the internet), then save the essay to the school server (on the internet) and print it wirelessly in order that I might tack their essays across the walls in my classroom, haven’t I then fulfilled the expectations of the Common Core: produce, publish, interact, and collaborate?  I included the internet and I can complete that assignment in less than a week.

Fundamentally, I’d hope the Common Core meant to express that our students also digitally produce, digitally publish, digitally interact, and digitally collaborate.  Embedded in what it means to be alive in 2012, much of the world communicates through digital means—if we leave these emerging digital tools to the next Angry Birds or just to keep in touch with family and friends then we lose—and you can point your fingers right at us, the American educators, because we will be working in a system which fails all of us.

It is not too late for American education to right itself and become active participants in the digital literacy renaissance.  We belittle the tools of technology when we do not actively reach to train our teachers and then our students to use them.  Otherwise, computers are little more than toys, typewriters, encyclopedias, or delivery systems for web-based supplemental tools such as Study Island (which provides little more than supplemental worksheets and activities on-line).  Technology in education often suffers beneath the yoke of simply pulling the same lessons built on the same expectations of tools-gone-by.

Why?  Because that is all we know—it’s what we were raised on.  A computer works like a typewriter, works like an encyclopedia, works like a tri-fold; therefore, that is all I’ll expect of it.

It is no longer enough to put computers in schools and roundly call it a success.  Educators need training in digital literacy, but that takes having a plan.  Currently, teacher training programs such as the National Writing Project are under the gun to have its funding eradicated.  If we ever really want to see our young people grow into creators and innovators, then we need teachers trained and constantly practicing and talking all aspects of the art of teaching—added to this is the digital component all teachers need training in digital literacy.  

We seem to be working backwards—the talk is that teacher training is a target of upcoming economic cuts and yet we roll out a Common Core entrenched in testing.  Write your Senators and Congressmen to take a long hard look at the Common Core and then at the digital landscape.  They won’t have to look far to see it—its inspiration is burning all around them.

Common Core Oversight #4: Assumption

Now there is a caveat for the Common Core—intended as merely a guide it assumes that districts can add and modify as they see fit.  This is a big assumption by our best and brightest.  Irrespective of neglect born from pedagogy or finance, we as educators can’t in good conscience leave this emerging and critical skill to the hope and discretion of “do as you see fit.”  Digital literacy skills are a must have for every child.  We can’t assume that it will get done.   We can’t assume that all kids have access to it at home—we have to demand training, resources, as well as the leadership.  We need to demand a better plan—we can measure training.  To the educational leadership, raise up your teachers, expect more—and arm them with the tools to do more.

Today, the Common Core leaves our young people digitally unarmed.  Students will file out of graduation and into a world milling and seething with technology…and we will have barely touched on it unless a rogue teacher exhibits the comfort and expertise to use it and teach with it.

The one thing that education should have going for it is technology—the depth and quality of our nation’s education should rise along with the continued evolution of technology.  We’re in the infant stages of a Digital Renaissance— and while our biggest and brightest sleep on this issue, we have a professional responsibility as educators to make ourselves digitally literate. 

I also hold the mirror up to myself.  We need to take the responsibility for the digital literacy that this generation will need to thrive and survive not only in the workplace, but in the family unit.  Digital literacy has infiltrated our television screens, our smart phones, and in our daily moment to moment communication with our family and friends—all of which sits in many of our pockets or bags.

Digital literacy is about more than recognizing the Twitter or Facebook icon at bottom of a commercial, it is bigger than the fear of graphic imagery that our young people could be exposed to on the internet.  You know they print pornography with paper and ink too, but that never stopped us from going to the library, bookstore, or handing out paper and pencil.  Avoid the luxury of excuses—make yourself more digitally literate.

Common Core Oversight #5: All Teachers Left Behind

Recently I wrote a grant for technology so that my students could be digital writers and readers more consistently and found myself presented with a concern that technology would replace pencil and paper.  The insinuation slanted technology more towards fun or idle time and pencil and paper as the emblem of diligence and getting our knuckles dirty with graphite.  Every adult in education is responsible for that perception.

Digital writing still requires that writers move through the recursive phases of planning, reflecting, drafting, and revising—the skill is still the skill, and, no, technology is not essential to the core of that skill, but we can't simply bring only traditional mindsets to current literacy practices.  The day is coming when reading and writing on paper will not be good enough in our world.  The definition and cultural concept of a textbook is about to be exploded by Apple and its competition.   Digital technology creates new skills and redefines old skills—life is about growth and change.  Depending on your perspective I suppose it is also about withering and dying…and being left behind.

I came across the anecdote that a group of teachers, instructed on some advancements to school email, learned students would also have their own school email accounts.  A concerned teacher questioned why we would give middle school kids this kind of access—how could we possibly trust them?  Can’t they abuse this?  What about if one kid cyber bullies another through the email we handed to them?  The teacher leading the group retorted, “Why would we ever trust them with pencil and paper?”

These concerns illustrate the boogeymen that can be conjured without the proper exposure and training to just what these tools are, what they can do, what they can’t do, and how they improve education and our collective quality of life.   It also demonstrates how far behind some of us are—eh, Rupert?

 If we allow the innovations of technology to serve merely as distractions or vehicles of our social lives then that is all we are going to get out of them.

Digital tools aren’t used in schools because they are cute or the latest thing or a vehicle to produce a sexier reproduction of a tried and true lesson, but they should be used because they, and only they, address the specific and unique skills emerging in today’s world. 

We underwhelm ourselves sometimes.

Politicians, parents, and educators need to share in a common core.  Our core should be built on the recognition that the digital age is here and it is a renaissance that we need to engage.  We can’t continue to be so casual about it.  We need to expect more of each other and become active members of the current Digital Renaissance in order that our students have a chance to grow into active creators and innovators who network professionally and socially as easily as they speak. 

If we want measurable results, train your teachers with an eye on the specific needs and evolution of society.  Being an adolescent in the early stages of the 21st century looks little like the early stages of the 20th century—when typewriters, the New England Primer, and paper flourished. 

You cannot teach what you have not made your own. You cannot inspire unless you too are inspired.  Quite frankly, the Common Core does little to inspire any of us, and in the end, may only serve to leave all us behind.

art by Sarah Louette

Liking and Hating Have No Home

After reading Kelly Gallagher's Readicide this week, a metaphor of shopping for a house has been working itself out in my head.  I wondered how many of my colleagues or parents of the kids I teach have the read the book, and wondered how many would if asked.

I wondered how many of your colleagues or parents of the kids you teach have read the book, and how many would if asked.

Without the proper perspective, we can all make terrible decisions when shopping for a house...without the proper perspective we can all make terrible decisions when teaching/encouraging young people to be readers and writers.

Immediately put-off by the color of the walls, the furniture itself, the layout, the curtains and the lighting, we judge and we leave.  If we don't give ourselves the time and freedom to explore the house (free from interruptions of color or ceiling fan style) beyond the surface issues, then we are more apt to dismiss it.  Next.

Because of state-mandated tests and the pressures and expectations associated with them, we hand drill-and-kill worksheets to our students to measure what they read--we make our students stop every chapter to reflect on a topic or quote in a dialectical journal--we regard a piece of writing from a student only for its errors in punctuation, grammar, and usage.  When we don't give students the time and freedom to explore the text (free from interruptions of who, what, where, when, why) beyond the surface issues, then they are more apt to dismiss it.  We are building test-takers, not readers or writers. Next.

Will someone provide the proper perspective, and teach us how to look at a potential home if we aren't receptive to it?  Are our discussions about a house centered on I didn't like it (based on the surface issues and our initial reactions)?  Can we take a step back and consider the real issues:

a. are there cracks in the ceiling or walls?
b. how old are the appliances and how soon would they need to be replaced?
c. what is the condition of the roof, the furnace, the windows, the air conditioning unit, the water heater?
d. is there dampness or mold anyplace?
e. did you turn on the faucets or flush the toilets?
f. how many amps of electricity are run into the house?
g. is there adequate storage and closet space?
h. does the layout work for you if you have children?

Will someone offer the state some legislators some perspective, and enlighten them to encourage teachers and parents to regard their child as a flesh and blood reader or a writer and be receptive to it?  The students are not numbers in their mother's arms, and when they are face to face with a teacher they are human beings--not numbers.  Pressed to find avenues to increase our state test scores, many of our discussions about reading center on "my students/child didn't like the book?"  Because if a kid likes a book then he must understand it...if he understand it then something good must be happening...and so we dwell on like. Can we take a step back and consider the real issues:

a. are your children reading for recreation, free of sticky notes, worksheets, and quizzes?
b. how many classrooms have a book flood--high interest books which students can borrow?
c. when do your children have time to read for pleasure--at home and at school?
d. is literature over taught--do you stop every five minutes to discuss it?
e. did you overemphasize the trivial at the expense of the meaningful aspects of the work?
f. are students asked to read a balance of difficult and recreational texts...authentic, real-world texts as well?
g. are the same students mired in remedial reading each year?
h. have we designed our reading and writing practice around NCLB and state-mandated tests?

None of the points about the house or the classroom or home reading practices are about style.  None are about how one polishes a house, an essay, a literature discussion or worksheet and prepares it to be seen and enjoyed by an "audience"...our family and friends and neighbors.

Liking a book should not be a part of the discussion--I know every student won't like or understand every book.  That is what a teacher is for--we're there to help them through the difficult and challenging literature, to see the big ideas, and relate it to world they live in now.  "It's not the difficult novels that are the problem; it's how they are taught that is the problem," Gallagher writes.  Reading (and writing) are rehearsals for the big ideas that will follow, inspire, and interfere with human beings all our lives.
 
Teach them how to see the book properly--give them a frame to begin with, guide them through some of the difficult passages, but then let them free to build up their own reading stamina.  Don't get in the way!  We don't have to apologize for students not liking a book or if a student is challenged by a book.

Whether or not a student likes or hates a book is no more relevant than liking the paint color of a house--that is what a paint brush is for.   Liking and Hating have no home in our classrooms.

As Gallagher notes, "These finding remind me of the words of Lev Vygotsky, who said, 'Children grow into the intellectual life of those around them." (53)

We are the teachers with the tools in our belt--consider adding Readicide to your professional library--hand it to colleague, an administrator, a parent.

August Macke -artist

Paper Mache Death Star

The same, enormous, financial oversight can be found in both teams behind the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.  Neither "tablet" allows for (easy) blogging.

How the hell can you create an updated e-reader without giving people the ability to write?  Readers are writers.

Both, at their core, are in the e-reader family--born from the Kindle and the Nook.  It strikes me that most on those corporate teams must not be readers.

Serious readers read more than books and magazines--they read blogs, and they read blogs about books.  They also, and more importantly, write blogs...about books.

About books.  Readers are writers--did I mention that?

Why wouldn't you encourage people to blog on your e-reader?  The whole genesis of the e-reader was for people to read books on your device--which is nothing more than a clever tractor beam into gently encouraging people to buy books from you.  Ok, that is fine--but it strikes me that no one understood that readers are writers.

Log onto GoodReads once.

If you allow people to write, blog, create documents easily you will sell more Fires, or "Tablets" or Widgets.  Right now, we can not do that.  I can use the Android market to download an App like Blogger, but not from your devices.

Your new devices collectively strike me as a paper mache Death Star.

Allow people to write and create on your device and they will buy YOUR books, Amazon (or Barnes and Noble).  Amazon, you tried to corner the market with your Amazon Prime offers but completely missed an easy access point in the market.

It wouldn't have taken much.

Allow Blogger, and Tumblr, and WordPress (et.al) to have an app on your network.  Allow users to create written documents.  You are not that far off from raising the eyebrows of the education market.

But right now all we can do on your unit is buy your books and play Angry Birds and watch movies.  That's great, except that your are catering to an unproductive segment of our lives.  The time when we sit to relax and escape in a book or a lazy game or movie.  How about the other, dominant segments of our day when we are productive, creative, and entrepreneurial members of society?

People write to make money.  There are scores of us out there.  Not to mention the fact that readers are writers.

You tried to be clever and offered a limited Android market of Apps so that it is controlled by you and dollars funneled to you directly.

You completely missed a market of millions of people.  There are millions of blogs out there.  Millions.

People of all ages blog--right now, the 25-45 crowd blogs more than any other demographic.  Yet, here is a million dollar tip for you.  In the very near future, the 18-24 crowd will catch them as more schools turn to digital writing.  Imagine getting your units into schools, colleges, universities as a primary tool?

Imagine textbook companies having an exclusive contract with you.  Right now a half dozen textbook companies fight it out like pirates whenever a school district is going to replace its books.  Imagine what kind of financial boon you could create for yourself if you partnered with a textbook publisher.

They publish books, you know.  To schools where people read...and write.  And people read and write at home, at work, on the train...people do read and write.

And your devices almost let us do that.  Almost.

So it is back to buying more iPads for our school.  And back to considering a second iPad for my house, rather than something else.

Do the research--and make the adjustment.  You'll sell more Widgets.

Nook of the Market

An open letter to Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anyone making tablets,

Your projects miss the mark for educators; they are close...but they miss the mark.  For one, Apple, your iPad is priced out of most classrooms. I own one, and I have visions of what this type of hardware can do for education, but right now it is akin to the invention of paper.  Very expensive.  And blank.

Barnes and Noble, I bought a Nook Color along with a N2A cards to allow for it to easily jump into  mode, and now you are releasing a Nook Tablet.  You actually did very well under our education tests, but your screen is very difficult to work with; it is "sticky" and unresponsive too often.  I will also add that the fact that you are still a brick and mortar business shows.  We called you.  And someone answered and agreed to come to our school to show us what the Nook Tablet could do for teachers and students.  You had a specialist who dealt with the Nook, and you had someone with knowledge of education--they could cite local schools using Nooks and how they were being used.

We asked if you could show us if the Nook Tablet could allow for student creation--could we create and write on a Nook with Wikispaces, Google Docs, Blogger, and Moodle...could this device be used to create digital writing?  (We already knew part of the answer because we tested you.)  And you answered honestly, you didn't know, but you listened, and promised you would ask someone else for us, and then you set up an appointment at our school.  You are coming to us.  And, in the end, your product may not be able to do what we need it to do, you earned big points for your effort on the phone with me.  I will be a more conscious consumer of B&N products in the future, especially considering our experience with Amazon.

R.I.P Borders brick and mortar stores.  You are sorely missed already.  We called Amazon to ask a few questions about the Kindle Fire and got someone on the phone who read to us from a script--he anticipated every question with a response so highly polished that some came no where near providing an answer to specific question we asked.  We asked if Amazon had someone in education we could speak with--no.  We asked if we could speak to someone who had specific knowledge of the Fire as it could relate to use in schools--no.  We asked if someone could come out to our school with a Kindle Fire to show us what it could do for our students--no.  We asked if we could write with Wikispaces, Google Docs, Blogger, and Moodle--you told us we could browse the web.  You told us we could buy a Fire and just return it after 30 days.  You were not helpful.

A change is coming in education--technology is bearing down on us and as many have noted in their own language, the schools standing today no longer serve the needs of the young people we are putting in them.

Apple, you went after the education market many years ago and you seized control of a nice chunk of it.  You have a chance to own it...but you are letting others leverage themselves.  Look at the mad scramble to create an android tablet which could compete for consumer dollars against the iPad.  No one has really done it yet, but there is a way in if you don't take care of business.

Imagine the money you could save education if a tablet were in every student and teacher's hands--and that is what we all read from, wrote on, shared with.

Imagine the shift in how dollars are spent...now they are spent on textbook purchases, rebinding, and replacing.

Imagine the ePad--an iPad for education where students can use all of the tools needed to create and share podcats, video, blogs, documents, multi-media projects and still use the web and an in-house school email client.

Imagine that the ePad allowed for the download of texts and supplemental readings from other books, magazines, newspapers in our content areas.

Imagine that schools could spend money on training its teachers how to best prepare young people for the digital evolution in our smart phones.

Can you imagine that many teachers still fear the technology?  Can you imagine that these computers (our smart phones) are banned in some schools and that they are seen as a distraction to education?

Can you imagine leading the evolution...truly leading it?

Can you imagine making this tool affordable for all schools?