A few weeks ago, I discussed reasons why writing can be scary for a lot of students and adults. Of the reasons that I gave, the one that has always terrified me the most is that writing is an intersection of public and permanent. It our thoughts and ideas and perspective, set in amber for all to see–a timeless monument to our imperfection in a given moment.

This fear of writing’s permanence is probably why I love blogging. Unlike other forms of writing, blogging is a living entity. On a blog there is space to discuss and update and footnote. That isn’t true with articles or podcasts or books. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these mediums, and especially books, as there is nothing like the deep meditation on a subject that a book can offer. Even still, I often find myself reading a book and wondering how the author would update it now, and when it comes to my own books, I regularly come across new ideas and information that I desperately wish I could magically transfer into them. Heck, I even have a folder for what I will add to my books if I ever get to write a second edition.

The desire to make books more adaptive is the genesis behind the project I’m announcing today: An online course on better and faster feedback that will take the core of my Flash Feedback approach and update it with everything I’ve learned in the four years since I finished the manuscript. And boy, have those four years had a lifetime of lessons crammed into them. I will also be adding even more practical tools, so that teachers can see what feedback looks like in my classes right now.

My hope is to launch the inaugural cohort in October, and subscribers of the blog and purchasers of the original book will get early access and a significantly discounted price (along with a few other surprises). In the meantime though, I didn’t want to wait until October to share a couple of videos on some of the ways that I will be upgrading my feedback practice this year, as the suggestions I’m sharing work best if they are introduced at the beginning of the year. A fair warning: the clips are still in the beta stage. Video is a new media for me, and I’m using these videos to fine-tune my sound, light, and overall approach, but they should give you a good sense for what the course will offer and hopefully give you some useful tools now, at the dawn of this new school year, that will allow your feedback to be both better and faster.

Starting this mini-series is one of my new favorite topics: feedback literacy.

Thanks for reading (and watching)!

Yours in teaching,

Matt

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