Make Your Own Textbook!

When I was teaching high school English, I rarely used the class textbook because I found it to be big and cumbersome, and it lacked relevant, quality texts that engaged my students. So I mostly created and sought out my own resources to use. Unfortunately, that led to the predicament of arranging and organizing materials into a clear and coherent sequence for myself and my pupils. I wish I would have compiled my stuff into some kind of digital format (beyond throwing stuff on my website) to make resources more accessible and engaging for students, and to make the management side easier for me. 

Below are some resources that will help guide your thinking and provide options for creating and/or customizing your own textbook. This is just a short list, but it is a good starting point: 

Laptops or tablets

I was just involved in a meeting today that was focused on choosing the best tablet for a 1 to 1 initiative in a local high school. I went to the meeting hoping to convince them that a laptop at a similar price range was probably more logical because they can do everything the school wanted as well as provide better typing features and more durability. The problem: the school has until the end of the month to spend the grant money, and there is no time for bidding anymore. So... they are going with an Asus model on the Android operating system. They are pretty sweet. I just hope it works out for them- I will be working a lot to help the implementation, which should be cool.