Ken Halla writes the US History Educators Blog. I’ve been following that blog for years so when Ken had his first book published I agreed to share the news here. Ken’s book preview is posted below. On a related note, Ken and I are planning to offer an online course together this summer.
For the better part of 14 months I (Ken Halla) have devoted a great deal of time to my new book Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction. If you follow my blogs on content, pedagogy and technology (US history, economics, government and world history) you know that I have definite research based beliefs to change that needs to occur in our classrooms. My book discusses these needs, outline the technology needed for higher level thinking and for more personalized learning and then gives you step by step instructions for how to use it all. Some of the topics include:
- How to expand your PLC at school to include a digital one using Twitter (both people to follow and hashtags), blogs, websites, etc and I give you lots and lots of examples you can use.
- How to integrate Google Drive in your classroom and more importantly how to use it to help “return” work more quickly and how to use it for mastery learning.
- How and why to flip your classroom and how to make sure your students are watching the videos.
- How to change your classroom after the flipping is done using what I call “interactive” which allow for higher level thinking.
- How to give your students more individual attention and even use free tests online tests to gauge their ability.
There is a lot more, but my favorite part of the book is that after giving you reasons why and then showing you how, I give you actual examples of how each is being implemented in the classroom. To ensure you follow through I give you and your PLC five action items to start doing in each chapter so you can change your classroom.
If you are interested, you can buy individual copies from Amazon or get group discounts by going straight to Corwin.
