I am excited to announce that Katie Novak and I will be starting an Instagram book study on January 22, 2020, on my co-authored book, “Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator’s Mindset.” There are three main goals of this book study:

1. To dig deeper into the ideas of the book and learn/model UDL learning strategies.
2. To encourage different multimedia creation to actively reflect and create meaningful learning opportunities. 
3. To use spaces like Instagram to build networks with other educators who are interested in the top of innovation in education.  

The book study will begin on January 22, 2020, and finish on February 12, 2020.  The hope is that participants would post 2-3 creations of their learning (photo, audio, video) from the book per week and/or comment on questions posed from the @gcouros account for the book study.  Katie and I will also be hosting a couple of Instagram live sessions discussing the book and interacting with participant questions.

Having a copy of “Innovate Inside the Box” is beneficial for the process but not necessary as the questions are pretty open-ended.  Other than the book, the process is free, and if you already own a copy, you are good to go!  If you are interested in previewing the book, you can get a preview of Chapter 1 by signing up for my email subscription list here.

Each day of the book study (or as you see fit), participants will be asked to share a reflection in some form on what they have read. It can be a video that they talk or share something, a visual they create, or whatever you can think of that can be represented through Instagram like a “Booksnap” (information on that from Tara Martin here).

There are many ways you can share your learning through Instagram, so please do not limit it to my suggestions.

I encourage participants to share in the following manner:

1. Share your post to the hashtag #InnovateInsidetheBox and the applicable chapter reading.  For each chapter, the second hashtag will be the following:
   
   Intro – #IITBIntro + #InnovateInsideTheBox
   Chapter 1 – #IITBCH1 + #InnovateInsideTheBox
   Chapter 2 – #IITBCH2 + #InnovateInsideTheBox
   Chapter 3 – #IITBCH3 + #InnovateInsideTheBox
   (Continued for all 14 chapters)
2. Each post should have #InnovateInsideTheBox AND the appropriate chapter hashtag. You can share any other hashtags that you see fit for the process as well.
3. Tag me (@gcouros) and Katie (@katienovakudl) on your Instagram post.  I will do my best to see as many as possible and comment. You are more than welcome to follow me on Instagram as well, but my account is open, so you do not necessarily have to do so.
4. Write as much as little or as much as you want in the subject line on your reflection.
5. Feel free to use the story feature to share your learning as well.  I will be sharing many of the creations to my own Instagram story from participants.

(*Please note that if your account is private only people that follow you will be able to see what you share.)

This process is something that I am still learning, but I learned so much from the group last time, and it was hugely beneficial. My ultimate hope is that this endeavor opens new and better doors for learning in the classroom that participants create for themselves.  Bear with me as I am growing through the process as well.

The dates for the reading are the following:

As well, please sign up here so I can try to follow all of the accounts that are taking part.  This is the only place you will need to “register”:

Sign up here!

Thank you for your interest in this process.  I am looking forward to connecting with educators through the Instagram platform to push my own learning and connect with others.

(PS…If you are interested, there are some shirts available here that some have already purchased for the book study and/or their schools. Below is a sample.)