As most Radical readers know, my second book—titled Teaching the iGeneration—came out in early July. 

Essentially an effort to document everything that I’ve learned about teaching with Web 2.0 tools, Teaching the iGeneration is chock full of practical suggestions for using everything from social bookmarking services to wikis and blogs in today’s classrooms.

What early reviewers have liked the best about TiG, though, is that it ISN’T just a book about technology. 

While you’ll find plenty of handouts detailing best practices for introducing new digital tools to your students, the focus of each chapter—and the strategies that I recommend—stands squarely on the characteristics of good teaching.

Readers will learn about the characteristics of effective persuasion and information management practices.  They’ll explore the characteristics of collaborative dialogue—a communication practice that has been essential for centuries—and take a closer look at the types of problems that students need to solve. 

Poke through the 70+ handouts in TiG—which are all posted for free download here—and you’ll see as many tools supporting the development of traditional skills as there are supporting the use of new tools. 

They include:

• Templates for gathering multiple perspectives around controversial topics.
• Activities designed to introduce students to the changing nature of influence and persuasion in the 21st Century.
• Rubrics for scoring persuasive pieces and influential visual images.
• Role plays that can be used to teach students about productive—and unproductive—conversation practices.
• Materials for evaluating potential solutions to defined problems. 

Does this sound like a book that you might just be able to learn a thing or two from?  Would it make for a good addition to the professional library in your building?  Can you think of a teacher—or a principal—that needs to learn more about how digital tools can be used to support responsible instruction?

If so, then you might be even more interested in winning one of the five free copies of Teaching the iGeneration that I’ve still got to hand out!