Guest Blog on Reading Rainbow

I'm going to keep this week simple: Today we have guest blog post up on the Reading Rainbow blog. It is an aptly times poetry post--aptly due to today being Valentine's day. Had I been more prepared, I'd have made a Valentine's Day poem to post here.

Instead, I'll just say you should go read that blog post instead. Lisa spearheaded the venture and Becky edited it. So it will be a refreshing change in that it wasn't written by me.

And I'm still planning on getting Becky to write a blog post here, but she's been busy.

Wes

Welcome to 2013

Welcome to 2013! We've been here a while now, but still, welcome.

Here at the RWT collective (since we don't have a specific headquarters), we are trying to sort out the year's projects. We have a lot of cool stuff in the works, but its always a puzzle to figure out what we will work on and what might not make it.

For instance, we recently had a survey about making a mobile version of the site. The survey was pretty informative and, I think, will help us make improvements to the main site--but it wasn't overall convincing that we should do the remote site. At least not yet.

Instead, we're going to try to make more of our interactives mobile friendly. That seems to be the direction we need to go.

That's a change we hadn't anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Other times, things just pop up unexpected. Just today, I got asked if I would like to attend the SoMIRAC Conference in Maryland in April--not just attend, but to do a session. Pretty cool getting the request, but it adds something on to my list of projects, and it's right before the IRA annual convention. Time Crunch!

I'm also on interactive/app duty (whichever direction we decide to go), which means coming up with an idea and writing specs.

Anyone out there have any ideas for me?

Next week, I'm going to go more into what sort of content and lessons we are seeking to add to the site to help bulk up some areas we see need improvement...or I'll get someone else to do it. I keep saying this is a joint blag thing, and then doing all the blogging myself.

Wes

10 Years of ReadWriteThink

In 2012, ReadWriteThink.org celebrated 10 years of supporting educators and providing resources to teachers, parents, and students. And we're proud to say that 2012 was our best year ever, shattering the 18 million visits mark!

ReadWriteThink.org keeps getting bigger and better, and as new theory and technology arise in the world of literacy education, we grow and change and adapt so that we can provide innovative materials and resources to the teachers and students who need them most.

We expanded on the number of student interactives that feature our work saver program, and massively updated and improved upon some of our most popular interactives, the Cube Creator, Trading Card Creator, and Printing Press.

Our largest project in 2012, by far, was the release of our first education apps for iPad tablet devices, our Trading Card and Word Mover mobile apps. These two were our pioneer projects into mobile technology, and by no means our last offerings in this realm.

This past year was a challenge, but a fun one for us at ReadWriteThink.org, and our success and popularity has us excited for opportunities in 2013. We'd like to thank you, our users, for making the site so widely used and so well loved. We couldn't have done it without you, and as always, your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Thanks for a great 2012!

-The RWT Team

Last Post for the Year

Today is my last day in the office for the year, and I'm getting out early!

It's a busy day, and I have a few announcements to make because we had a bunch of projects wrap up recently.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd have something fun and cool to show off. Turns out I have a couple.  First is a quick video about our Trading Card app:

I hope that works, embedded in there like that. Seems like it should.

Second, Printing Press is now live and looks awesome! That was a big project for Lisa and Christy, and they  really knocked it out of the park. Maybe next post I'll make part of the post in the printing press and paste it up here. I should have done that with this post. Alas, my creativity comes to me too late!

I've talked about one of the projects for next year being a potential mobile-friendly version of ReadWriteThink. We made a survey about what our users want to see on such a site, and we've just pushed it live. Please take a moment to answer the questions and help us make the best possible site we can for our tablet, smart phone, and mobile device users. Which can include the students, if we see that that is the trend among the responders.

That's it for me for 2012! Catch you in the new year. Have a safe and happy holiday session.

Wes

Not a Millionaire

Despite a weekend Vegas and $550 million dollar lottery, I am not a millionaire. Ah well, maybe next time.

So what am I going to talk about this week?

I'm at a loss, actually. I've had a catch-up week, coming back from a trip to Vegas (productive and fun!) and then a major US holiday last week. I spent the beginning of November prepping for the NCTE convention and the Doug Buehl webinar (which went extremely well--we have the archive up for free is you missed it). I came back and am kind of in a holding pattern. I'm waiting for Venn Diagram and the Android version of Trading Cards to be available for testing. I've been doing a lot of small, uninteresting-to-write-about job maintenance projects: follow-up on emails, researching traffic projections, designing banners for the homepage.


That last one is a new thing for me--my coworker Becky usually handles that for the IRA side, along with Christy on the NCTE side. But alas, Becky is no longer in the office having given birth to her third child this past weekend.

The last few weeks have been kind of boring for me, I guess! So let's look ahead: What does December have in store for the RWT team?

The already mentioned testing of apps is a big one. We have a 2013 work plan to draft out (which will give me more to talk about as we figure out what we are looking to do in 2013). The survey for the mobile site should be out next month as well.

One of my goals in December is to get out in to our social media platter and figure out how we can be more interactive with users. Fix up the areas that we aren't really representing ourselves. We have a Pinterest account, for instance, and I've not really familiarized myself with using Pinterest.

I know one area we will be adding something in the next couple weeks is YouTube. But I'll save that post for next time, when I have something to show you rather than just talk about. The showing is important for this one.

Wes

Halloween, Hurricanes, and Las Vegas!

The Delaware-based side of ReadWriteThink faired the recent Sandy storm well. We look around at the destruction that just missed us to the north, and our thought go out to those who were hit hard my the hurricane.

Halloween has now come and gone, and with it, my sugar rush.

And that moves us closer to NCTE's convention in Las Vegas next week! Whoa! I've never been to Las Vegas before, so this is really exciting for me. I not only get to represent IRA, meet with the NCTE team, and have a fabulous and productive dinner with the RWT Advisory Board, but I get to see Vegas! AWESOME!

OK, business. What have we been up to here?

Word Mover (which I have mentioned before) is now out on iTunes! It's free and it's fun, so download it, create some poems, and share them with us.

This week had us preparing a webinar presented by Doug Buehl, one of IRA's authors (DevelopingReaders in the Academic Disciplines and ClassroomStrategies for Interactive Learning). More information about the webinar can be found here.

I've had several chance to meet Doug over the years I've worked at IRA. He's a great speak, very interesting, and I think pretty funny. He's got a great whit. He's also very knowledgeable.

We're still very focused on what the next big thing for ReadWriteThink will be. We are pondering a mobile-friendly version of the site, but we need some feedback. Is it even a good idea? If so, what areas should be mobile friendly? How do we best present information in the mobile format?

We'll have a survey coming out to better help us decide how users will use the information. I hope to have some more info after the group meeting and advisory board dinner in Vegas.

Hmmm? What was that? How did the 5k race go?

Thanks for asking! It went horribly! It was my worst 5k time ever--I'm blaming the 15lbs of gear I had on as part of my costume.

Wes

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

Guess what the topic of this post is about?

"Gee, maybe how you can't even keep up with an every-other-week posting schedule?"

....... No.

"Really, Wes? Really?"

...... Sorry.

It's about mobile technology!

First, I'm going to wow you with a couple links to a couple blog posts that are all kinds of awesome. A huge Thank You to Julie Ramsay who featured the Trading Card app as part of her post in her blog over the weekend. And even bigger THANK YOU (yes, I actually made it bigger) to her students, who used the Trading Card app in class and then posted about it in their class blog! They included their samples, which was really awesome, being able to see students using something I worked on.

Second, the Android version is nearly in our hands for testing. I'm going to guess that is still a couple weeks at least before it is downloadable.

Third, Word Mover went through beta with flying colors and is well on its way to being out there. I did a poem or two for testing. I suppose I can share one of the masterpieces.

The assignment was to right a poem about a book. I picked my favorite, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Does it make sense even if you've read the book Neverwhere? Maybe. But it was a fun exercise, using the limited words to try to write about the book!

Fourth, RedWriteThink is investigating making a mobile site, an abbreviated, mobile-optimized version to make browsing on a phone or tablet much easier, faster, and cheaper on your data plan. This idea is only just being to be floated around the ground, and we have a lot of research to do about what sort of content to put on it, how will it look, and even is this something teachers want?

Which is why I'm writing about it here--is this something you might want? Do you browse for lessons and classroom ideas on a mobile device? Would you if it was made easier and faster? Or is this something that will likely remain a desktop job for a while longer and making new apps and interactives would be a better use of our time?

We want to know what you want! How else would we know what to get you?*

Fifth, I have another 5k run coming up this weekend. I did one earlier in the month, and am looking to beat my previous time (and this time I'm running with friends; the hope is to beat all of them, too!). It's also a costume run. Fun fun! I'll update next time with pictures from that.

Wes

*This argument never flies with my wife when it is gift-giving time. She insists that I should be able to figure something out on my own. Apparently the surprise is part of the fun. I'd rather know I was getting something I wanted than be surprised by something I didn't.