The first day of school for my children is in 21 days. Our youngest will be a second grader, our middle son a middle school, seventh grader, and our oldest begins her first year in high school. One in each school. I will again travel to Virginia Tech for three days a week to work towards completing my Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction: English Education.

As I move into gearing up for the new school year, I am challenged by Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner’s July 2013 English Journal article entitled “No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy Can’t Wait.” The authors share what teachers are doing to kill digital literacy and then move to suggestions for increasing both our capacity and our students’ capacity in regards to digital literacy. One place to begin to increase our digital literacy skills is to read and respond to blogs, and a list of handy blogs for English educators is provided. I saved these to my “favorites” so that I could work on this area, and I will move the ones that speak to me the most to my Diigo account. This morning I read Will Richardson’s latest post and tweeted it out to my followers. His concern lies with assessment and electronic feedback, and based on Hicks’ and Turner’s challenge and Richardson’s concern, I aim to achieve two goals for this year regarding feedback and my own digital literacy.

1. I will strive to create meaningful, collaborative work environments where students can stretch themselves in the area of digital literacy. These environments will be structured in such a way that authentic, incremental, and formative feedback will be given among the group as well as from the instructor.

2. I will continue to blog monthly and will read others’ blog and share their posts or respond.