In a way, I envy Tim Stahmer. He *has* a blogging process to change. Meanwhile, I struggle to even develop a blogging practice. I am taking his idea to heart: just write something even if it’s a question or idea to consider over time.

So, here’s my observation for today: if you stick around long enough in education, ideas come around again. And, sometimes, it makes me feel old. This time, it was this tweet:

My best use of ExplainEverything app: photograph student work and edit immediately in front of whole class #edchat pic.twitter.com/dpOIg9Ja4z

— Franklin 002 (@crabbe1412) November 28, 2014

It’s a pedagogical approach I used way back in 1988 when I was a beginning English teacher. Except instead of taking a picture of my student writing, I ran it through the copier to create an overhead transparency and then wrote on it with markers. Remember, student writing in those days was actual handwriting and the overhead projector was my only way to project an image to the whole group.

The affordance of the digital technology is that it is easier to save the changes and share them with the student. I don’t remember ever sending the overhead home with the student. Our collaborative editing was much more ephemeral even as the writing itself was more ephemeral, shared only with me and the class, rather than with the world. Digital technology makes the pedagogy more powerful, I think.

And makes me feel a little old.