Teaching literacy with technology in an era of educational innovation. By Jen Roberts 🦋 @jen.litandtech.com
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At this time last week I was at Google, enjoying a lovely meal on the patio of Charlie's cafe with educator colleagues from all over the country. We were there for a two day convening to learn more about the Google AI Educator Series , or GES as they call it. Full disclosure, Google paid for my travel to the event. Which is remarkable in that for the 15+ years I've been involved in Google events,…
If there ever was a post that belonged perfectly on this blog, it is this one about Brisk Boost for Reading. You may know the Chrome Extension Brisk as a great way to give feedback, create materials, or inspect a text to authenticate it. (It also works with Microsoft Edge now too.) If you don't have the Brisk extension I highly recommend it for all those reasons. This post though, is about Brisk…
My latest favorite way of using AI in my classroom is to vastly improve the look of my Canvas course pages and assignments. Update: I've built a custom tool in Magic School called HTML Improver . You can make a copy of it for yourself and use it to quickly improve the HTML of any Canvas page. It's easier than working with Claude or ChatGPT. Once you make a copy of the tool, click generate. Then…
The photo, circa 2018? Years ago, in a different classroom, I had a glorious long whiteboard. It stretched for nearly the full length of one side wall of my classroom. One of my favorite things to use it for was listing sentence frames my 9th graders could use to help them craft body paragraphs of an essay. To take a picture of it I had to use the pano option on my phone, but I am so glad I took…
Looking to expand your knowledge on writing instruction, AI in education, and innovative teaching strategies? Here are some fantastic upcoming opportunities to learn with me! Upcoming: Write to Joy: K-12 Writing Conference 2025 📅 October 11, 2025 (Previously scheduled for 6/14) 🕘 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM 📍 OCDE Kalmus Drive | Building D, Costa Mesa, CA 💰 $150 (Pre-Service Teachers: $50) 🔗 Register:…
Creating effective student groups has always been a challenge. Ten+ years ago I created a spreadsheet to help me group my students based on my observational and academic data, so that I could quickly create both heterogeneous and homogeneous groups. I've learned a few things from over a decade of regularly using flexible student groups. Reel Results: First, students don't like this. Changing seats…
In October I had the privilege of speaking to a group of pre-service teachers in their first semester of credential preparation. I met their instructor while she was the university supervisor for my previous student teacher. She wanted me to tell her students about AI in education. We only had 90 minutes together, so after our class meeting she invited them to share additional questions. Some of…
Ideogram: A synthwave-inspired illustration depicting an AI and a teacher collaboratively grading papers. Teachers are adding AI tools to their classroom workflow and lots of educational technology companies are offering products that help with daily teacher tasks like preparing materials and designing lessons. But, can an AI grade student writing? And if it can, should teachers consider using an…
I teach English to 9th graders, which means I frequently ask them to write things. Right now we are working on a narrative unit and I often ask them to write stories related to our readings. Recently, we have watched the famous TED talk about the danger of a single story, and read a great essay on the same topic, and then I asked students to write about a time when they had a single story about a…
It's been a fabulous three days at the Adobe Innovator Summit, a chance to connect and reconnect in person with many educators that have and will continue to inspire me. The focus was very much on Adobe Express for Education , a product from Adobe that is free to K-12 educators and students. I won't say free forever because forever is a very long time and we've all seen other tools that promise…
