#CyberPD - Digital Reading Part 2

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Chapters 3-5 in Digital Reading by Bill Bass and Franki Sibberson this week.  When you read several books by the same author its like visiting with a friend.  I find their writing together friendly, inviting, and encouraging.  I really hope other participants are feeling the same way as you continue to read about using technology in your literacy work.  Personally, I'm finding this book nudging and pushing me to do more with my students and digital reading.  I've been skimming the surface with technology and I'm feeling some nudges and pushes by reading Bill and Franki's book to find ways to use technology with more authenticity, with intentional decisions in hopes of becoming more connected.  

In making the work in my classroom authentic, I clearly need to share and think carefully about my own digital reading life.  I loved the questions on p30 and thought they might make good mini lesson topics for my second graders.  I also think these might be worth talking to parents.  I wonder if they are digital readers?  I wonder if they share their digital reading with their child?  I usually invite parents to come in and share their reading lives with us and over the years my students have loved to ask if they read on an e-reader.  Maybe my informational letter about reading to families needs to include a digital reading piece.  

I want to model digital reading more in our workshop and have digital reading an option for my students.  I think a Symbaloo board called, Places We Read might be a great project in the near future.  This way students could also access it from home.  In the past, a few students have owned an e-reader but they haven't brought them to school.  I wonder why and might offer that as an option, my district does have a BYOD policy.

Several times throughout these three chapters I read Voices from the Classroom scenarios that connected written digital or video pieces to content areas of learning.  I think this might be a great first step with our primary learners.  I want to spend some time exploring and finding digital text to compliment our science and social studies content, especially. I'm wondering how Franki or others organize the clips they use?  Our school days are being reorganized and we are being asked to do more without any additional time.  Integrating the content areas into our literacy work might be very helpful and vice a versa.  

The connected piece has been missing in my classroom community.  I have not had parents or encouraged parents to leave us comments on our classroom blog.  I have not shared it very publicly for others to learn along with us.  I've created a twitter account and just last spring figured out how to work around district filters to be engaged with it.  We were able to connect with Amy LV at Poetry Farm and what a great experience this was for my students.  I think our twitter focus will be to connect with other classrooms and authors or professionals in our field/area of learning, not a reminder of things for parents.  I hope to Skype with an author this year, participate in Global Read Aloud and World Read Aloud Day, all things I have known about but never participated in.  

As you can tell, I have lots of things swirling through my head.  Thank goodness for summer to regroup and connect with all of you to help me grow.  Thank you to Cathy, Laura, and Michelle for co-hosting and generating some summer #CyberPD love!