Here it is, Radical Nation: The first day in our four-day conversation on the state of reading instruction with high school teacher and noted author Kelly Gallagher, who’s new book Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it is being released by Stenhouse this Spring.
Interested in joining the conversation?
Then click this link: Enter Readicide Conversation
You might also be interested in this set of suggestions on how to make digital conversations work for you and this set of directions about how to sign up for a Voicethread account. Don’t forget that you can still download the complete text of Readicide by visiting this link.
If you struggle at all with your own Voicethread login, you can use this generic login that I created this morning:
Username: readicide@wcpss.net
Password: readicide
You’ll find a small box in the bottom left hand corner of the presentation that will let you change to any of a range of generic identity icons. The only hitch with using this generic login is that only one user is allowed to login under an identity at a time! If you struggle to get in using the generic login, consider waiting for 20 minutes and then coming back.
Something to know about navigating Voicethread conversations:
While working in a Voicethread conversation, participants can choose to hit the “Play” button at the bottom of any particular slide and watch the conversation around that slide from beginning to end. That’s probably the best strategy the first time you stop by our Readicide conversation because you’ll get to hear my opening questions, Kelly’s initial responses, and the initial thinking of other participants.
As you revisit pages, however—-something you should do once or twice over the course of the week to see how conversations are developing—-you can click on new icons surrounding the quotes that you are interested in to hear new comments that have been added. You can also click on individual comments in the “Timeline” bar that appears at the bottom of each slide.
By doing so, you won’t have to listen to every comment every time that you stop by our conversation!
Let’s knock this out of the park, huh?
Take some time in the next four days to add what you know, to allow your thinking to be challenged and to challenge the thinking of others. Be committed to walking away from this conversation with new evidence and information that you can use to influence the parents, teachers and principals of your buildings.
Reading instruction has to change—-and the first step in change is building knowledge!
Voicethread can help us to do that together.
