Trying Something New Today with @bookdealerSusan at the #YASummit2021 - Using Padlet to Highlight a Year of Padletting and Building Writers with YA Literature

My twin is much better looking than me. 

We're fraternal, too, and she entered a few years ahead with red fire in her locks and freckles on her skin. 

Truth be told, we met and bonded 7 years ago today when Steve Bickmore was at LSU, before he moved to UNLV. It was then I said or did something that made Susan laugh, or I said something about her carrot-top hair (I get that from my father) and the rest is history.  She's been stalking me ever since. 

Actually, there'd be no sanity in my life if I didn't have Susan. And I have lots of Sues...my mom, my Louisville mentor-for-life, my aunt...It's like a collection of Susans. I planted black-eyed ones in my garden, too.

Last summer when I jumped headfirst into The Write Time, Susan shared with me the Padlet she created as an advanced institute for her Emerald Coast Writing Project people. I was like, "How'd you do that? Teach me." She did. "It's easy-peasy." Well, I followed her advanced institute with a national park collaboration, several courses, professional development in schools, and youth workshops. Susan did the same. With our love for YA writers and prompting youth, we decided to look at our year's worth of Padlets and to collect data - to name the phenomenon.

We only have a portion of time to speak, and each of our links leads to a year's worth of Covid-Work, but we're hoping it will provide a template for others to imagine the use of digital tools to offer amazing opportunities for teacher and youth audiences. The best part of it is that it is a moving file cabinet....it feels like you're able to curate materials for a museum and instruct from there. I love it (the visual monster in me has found a Utopia)

AND, the two of us will feature over 20 YA books that we've used in our programs to initiate awesome writing. 

Ah, I wish I could write the whole thing here, but you have to sign up for the summit to hear more. Or you can call me. The other humorous thing is that while I am presenting on Padlet, I have 300 teachers looking at another Padlet in a PD I created while I couldn't be there. It's a timeline collage of what is possible in digital spaces (Yes, we can be in two places at once).

I'm a convert. I no longer see a need for regional hierarchies created by higher education. We can curate what is possible for teachers beyond the way they own us and, perhaps, begin revolutionizing and redesigning learning so that it is no longer be about their profits on our backs.

We shall see.

Okay, it's not that exciting, but it is a commercial for what is possible. And I love working with Susan.

That's the post. Time to get a Bickmore, Donnovan, Rumohr fix.