Let's Talk About Videos

I've "starred" in a few videos myself for various International Reading Association marketing efforts (alas, I think they have all been removed from the internet!). Videos can be fun and informative; entertaining and educational. There are several videos embedded in various ReadWriteThink resources, from examples of teachers using our lessons in the classroom to some videos showing off our interactives to a whole collection of videos that show users how to make best use of the site features.

But they aren't always easy to find. Yet.

This is a little scoop on a pretty major change that we've been working on over summer: ReadWriteThink is adding a video library right on the main navigation. This totally new section will feature all of the videos that appear on our site as well as link to webinars or other videos that we have done or sponsored but are not able to host. As part of our on-going efforts to make ReadWriteThink as mobile friendly as possible, our videos are being converted from a Flash format to mobile-ready videos.

Some videos are student facing, but most are for teachers. So far.

We are always on the look out for quality video that we can add to our collection. We want to show lessons in action in the classroom. We want examples of research-based best practices. We'd love to get some informational videos on the Common Core and its implementation.

If you have ideas, let us know. We'd love an opportunity to work with you. The majority of our content is already user-submitted, after all.

Even if it isn't what we are looking for for the website proper, we also have a Youtube channel and we love to support and link to user-created content. Quite a few videos have been made by users showing how to use the various interactives. Useful if you want to use one in your classroom: You can give the link to students in case they forget what they are suppose to do. But don't think we are only about the RWT-based videos. Have you seen the What's Your Writing Style video? How cool is that?! Kids singing and dancing about writing! I love it!

I'll make a note of the video library page when it officially launches, but now you have the inside scoop of what is up and coming from RWT. I'm on vacation next week, so you won't be hearing from me. The week after, I should have loads of links to new stuff and some cool announcements about all the neat projects I am working on. We've got some really cool stuff coming down the pipeline.

But for now, I am off on vacation. Toodles!

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