Diving Deep
I think most educators today would acknowledge that they feel like they are almost required to graze the surface of many topics, because of pacing guides, testing, etc. Diving deep into a subject is rare, or if it does happen, it’s by mandate and to the exclusion of deep work anywhere else. That’s sort of from top-down perspective. However, on the flip-side we tend to do the same thing to ourselves by getting sucked into the lists of “Top 30 apps for Number Fluency” or “50 Amazing Literacy Websites,” etc. and then using many of them with our students, so that they never get a chance to actually fully explore the features and benefits of the given tools. I know I have certainly been guilty of it. As I was leaving a classroom one day, a teacher told me that she really liked a particular app, but felt that it was a deep app, and felt bad that she wasn’t using it to it’s full potential. That phrase really struck me: “deep app.” I’d never heard that term used before, but I think it’s ab...