Reading Amplified

In Reading Amplified: Digital Tools That Engage Students in Words, Books, and Ideas, you can look over Lee Ann's shoulder at her computer screen or into her classroom as she guides students to deeper reading and engagement with digital tools, ranging from the Google Book search concordance feature to comic strip software. Spillane seeks to take the "tedium out of routine tasks we need to teach." By now we've all seen examples of Wordle, the technology app that converts chunks of text into a word cloud featuring words of different sizes according to their prevalence in the text. But you haven't seen the real power of Wordle until you've seen Lee Ann Spillane's high school students use it to analyze patterns and symbolism in The Great Gatsby. In Reading Amplified: Digital Tools That Engage Students in Words, Books, and Ideas, you can look over Lee Ann's shoulder at her computer screen or into her classroom as she guides students to deeper reading and engagement with digital tools, ranging from the Google Book search concordance feature to comic strip software. Spillane seeks to take the "tedium out of routine tasks we need to teach." Her instruction is infused with technology that energizes students, but her focus is always on deep learning that motivates them to become passionate and independent readers. "It's about the teaching, not the tool," she reminds us. "I do a lot of learning right beside my students."