This blog post describes how I curate and consume my education reading list. It’s a response to Michaela Epstein’s post (@mic_epstein) with the same questions (and title!).
I hope that others in the Edu-Twitter/blogging community will also write posts that respond to the same six questions. The greater the diversity of responses, the more likely it’ll be that a reader will find an approach that works for them. Write as little or as much as you like. You might also like to read posts by Ollie Lovell (@ollie_lovell), Amie Albrecht (@nomad_penguin), and Jeremy Hughes (@JeremyinSTEM).
Feel free to write less than me, I got a bit carried away after I got started. What a reading nerd I am.
1. What does your average reading/watching/listening day look like?
I schedule a reflection time each working day in my Outlook calendar for the last half hour of my time at work (6:00 – 6:30 pm). I use it for Twitter, online or offline reading, and some reflection activities. It might be more accurately called Generative Time, because I feel like it refreshes me each day to finish with something that helps me learn (and it gets me away from emails). To be fair, I don’t always stop with my busy work when the reminder pops up, but usually I enjoy at least some of the half hour for taking in an inspiring idea or three.
I used to use an RSS reader to read teaching blogs but I fell out of the habit and also the program was discontinued. Now I usually see the blogs I want to read via Twitter anyway.
I love reading hard copy books and this is my preference for books because I love highlighting and writing in the margins. (I read fiction on my Kindle but I prefer non-fiction of all types in hard copy.) I sometimes read at home in the evening or on the weekends for half an hour at a time. School holidays are a good time for me to read more. (This blog post is being written during the Easter holidays.)
I use OneNote extensively at work for teaching as well as organising my own resources and some aspects of my department’s admin. I have a personal OneNote notebook where I read articles by printing them to OneNote pages as pdfs. This allows me to digitally highlight and write in the margins, which I love. (More about this in question 4, below.) I saw that Ollie wrote in his post that if he has to read hard copy books he scans them in – eek! Does this mean he cuts them up and uses the document feeder? Or stands over the photocopier turning pages for 20 minutes?
The question said reading/watching/listening, but I only really like the first of these! I don’t like to be “talked at”. Books are friendlier.
2. If you use Twitter, how do you use it?
I love Twitter (find me here: @mathsfeedback) and I’ve had my professional account since 2010.
I am not a prolific user of lists, I normally just scroll through my feed. But I almost always do this on Tweetdeck in a browser on my computer, where I have multiple columns: my feed, the feed of the department account that I manage, tweets that mention my school, notifications, mentions, likes, and a few changing columns based on currently interesting hashtags. At the moment, I’m watching #ibmaths, #thinkingclassrooms, and #atmsingapore.
I use Likes for the sole purpose of tweets that contain things I want to come back to later. About once a week or two, I use my reflection time to scroll through my Likes and collect from the tweets the things or ideas I wanted to come back to. For teaching ideas, I add them to my Resources Listing document (I have blogged about it here and there’s also a blank template available) or copy it straight into my “Lessons Master” OneNote. For articles, blog posts, or web pages I want to read, I print them to my “Reading” section in my personal OneNote notebook.
I also use Twitter on my phone occasionally while on the train or standing in queues. Then I use Likes to mark the things I will come back to later.
I mostly tweet about things I’m learning or reading, things that I tried in my classroom, or ideas that I found helpful.
3. How do you manage your reading list, and how do you decide what makes the cut?
I’m not sure I “manage” it much at all. My to-be-read piles (hard copy and digital) are massive. A few years ago I read that Ryan Holiday thinks reading is so important, he never stops himself from buying a book he finds interesting. At the time I figured that I finally had an adult job that paid money, so I started being a bit more free with my book buying. Since then I’ve been enjoying the blessing of having more than enough to read! Most of the time it’s not overwhelming, as the title of this blog post may suggest. I keep a list on my phone and order them when there are three or more.
My main strategy is to read something that interests me as soon as possible after seeing or getting it. My interest will likely wane if I wait too long. I at least try to skim articles immediately. As a result, I do struggle with finishing articles and books that I pick up. A tactic that has helped recently is a simple list where I write the books I have finished this year. Even that small reward of writing the book on the list is enough to push me a bit further.
Books often make it onto my list because they are recommended by others. If my line manager mentions an interesting book I will usually pick it up. If two or more or my Senior Leadership Team mention a book (there are seven of them), I will have a look to see if it might benefit me, too. I often read books that I hear about through articles or Twitter. And every interesting article mentions another one that I also want to pursue!
4. How do you take notes and collect the gems from what you read?
I use Twitter Likes as described above in question 2. I collect gems from the Likes every week or two.
I collect articles I want to read in my personal OneNote notebook by printing them there as pdfs. I love to annotate and highlight and comment on things I read by writing in OneNote. Here’s a paragraph (which spans two pages of the pdf printout) from an article about the Testing Effects by Roediger, Putnam, and Smith. I used the pen on my device to take notes and highlight.
I am now trying to train myself to take reading notes from my hard copy books in the same OneNote notebook but it’s not working too well so far. This needs further thought.
When I was reading Michaela’s post about this, I was initially most interested in her spaced retrieval method for remembering the things she reads. She uses SuperMemo and I see that Ollie uses Anki. I need to think further about this. Do you use a spaced retrieval method?
5. Is there anything you’re still trying to work out in terms of managing overwhelm and the massive amount of edu-info that’s out there?
Well, yes, of course. Remembering what I’ve read is an area that needs further work! But mostly I don’t feel too overwhelmed. I just read what I can and make sure I enjoy it all – that’s good enough.
6. What are some of your fave tweeters/blogs/podcasts/youtubers etc that you’d recommend to others?
Matt Parker (@standupmaths): He’s informative, funny, and used to be my housemate.
Jo Morgan (@mathsjem): How does she have time to run the amazing Resourceaholic blog, teach, tweet, and organise and speak at conferences?
John Rowe (@mrjohnrowe): He shares ideas from his classroom, resources that he’s made, and also retweets some of the most interesting maths visualisations.
I’d love to hear about your education reading workflow. Tweet me or comment below!