Powerful Task Design: Rigorous and Engaging Tasks to Level Up Instruction(Corwin Teaching Essentials)

How can educators use technology to increase students’ engagement in activities essential to rigorous learning? What are the most effective tools for analyzing, designing, and refining those tasks of learning? And finally, how can we increase the cognitive rigor and thoughtful integration of technology into learning tasks, in order to better prepare students for college and beyond? In Powerful Task Design, these questions and more will be answered, as you get to know the Powerful Task Rubric for Designing Student Work. Applicable for educators across all disciplines and grade levels, you’ll use the tool to analyze, design, and refine cognitively engaging tasks of learning. This guide will help you Explore and use the Powerful Task Rubric piece-by-piece in an easily digestible format to help you delve into the tool’s design components. Use technology to complete interactive tasks, and understand first-hand how technology is a critical design component in student task design that brings about more profound and relevant learning. Identify opportunities for creating powerful tasks in the areas of engagement, academic strategies, questions, and cognition. Supplement your task design arsenal with tools like the Diagnostic Instrument to Analyze Learning (DIAL). This must-have resource brings together the research and strategies educators need to design engaging, powerful learning tasks. Student performance has a direct correlation to the power of the learning task - this book will help you positively impact both. 

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments About the Authors Introduction: The Power of the Task 1. The Work of School A Task Is a Task Task Predicts Performance The Design Components of a Task Technology in a Working Model, or When Terri Met Sally (Ahem, John) The Powerful Task Rubric for Designing Student Work 2. Analyzing Learning With the Powerful Task Rubric One Content, Five Tasks Where Was the Power? 3. The Power of Engagement The Qualities of Engagement Interaction as Engagement A Task Is Powered Up 4. The Power of Academic Strategies It Starts on the Playground Strategies of Personal Response Identifying Similarities and Differences Summarizing and Note-Making Note-Taking Becomes Note-Making Reflection in Note-Making Nonlinguistic Representations Generating and Testing Hypotheses Reflection and Closure 5. The Power of the Question Where Does a Question Come From? See-Think-Wonder Where Do Teacher Questions Come From? How to Open a Question Technology and Questions 6. Engaged in What? The Power of Cognition Cognitive Demand Learning Through Accepting Meaning Thinking and Making Meaning Making Meaning on Top of Meaning Sliding Across the Cognitive Continua: A Hierarchy, Not a Sequence Math Cognition and the Task Rubric Encoding and Memory 7. Power Up: Using the Diagnostic Instrument to Analyze Learning The Diagnostic Instrument to Analyze Learning Premises and Research Behind the DIAL Using the DIAL Three DIAL Implementations Tips for the Tool 8. Putting It All Together Final Thoughts References Index

Review :
"An easy-to-follow tool for educators wishing to reflect on the rigor of their classroom tasks with excellent tips to take learning to the next level!" "It is painfully obvious that something needs to be done to do more than simply engage students; we need to cognitively engage them and this book gives you the tools with which to do just that. Everything is here for you to make those changes." "Finally! A resource that focuses first on the TASK (what it is we are asking of our students) and then the RESOURCES (what technology is at our disposal to accomplish the task?). For decades now, the process has been backwards and the focus has become bells-and-whistle-technology that is mistaken for authentic engagement. This book will give tangible tools for the teacher toolbox while keeping the eye on the rigor prize for students." "With this collaboration, John′s expertise with designing engaging and rigorous student tasks is combined with Terri′s vast knowledge of effective technology use in the classroom.  Both John and Terri have worked with our district′s teachers and administrators and have helped bring about increased teacher effectiveness.  This book is the perfect next step resource for our district′s continuous improvement journey as well as for any educator ready to effectively take their student task design practices to the next level and meaningfully engage today′s ′techie" student.′"  "As educators we are on a continuous journey to stretch and grow to our fullest potential and we all have a ‘ceiling’ of effectiveness. The interactive approach of #Powerful Task Design will serve as a valuable tool for educators as the stretch and growth toward a higher ceiling." "Are you grappling with how to create an instructional task that both challenges and engages? Do you continue to struggle with issues related to effective integration of technology into lesson designs? Are you seeking to understand how rigor and engagement can move beyond overused and empty clichés? Explore these and other essential questions in this highly practical, well-researched book that offers practitioner-friendly tools brought to life by a treasure-trove of examples across the content areas of k-12 classrooms. Inviting reflection and personal response at strategic points, the authors skillfully integrate video and other technology with written text to create a book that exhibits the design principles they propose. Powerful Task Design is a must-read for individual educators and a practical guide for PLCs." "Powerful Task Design will help you rethink how to get the full value from the technology tools you have available in your classroom. I found John and Terri’s work to be both practical and transformative. Teachers will come back to this book time and time again as we are challenged to find ways to push thinking, rigor and engagement to a higher level for your students." "Antonetti and Stice push educators to create well-designed tasks that fully engage students and create powerful results. We want the students to learn first and then utilize technology tools to make learning more meaningful.  Combining Antonetti’s brilliant work with his engagement cube and Stice’s technology genius is ′just mind-blowing.′" "Antonetti and Stice once again provide outstanding leadership, research, and guidance through an ever expanding and vital conversation on learning design. This book further shifts the conversation from technology to learning, from simply rehashing techno-centric approaches, to ready-to-implement rich learning experiences for students further empowered through digital tools and resources.       In this book, you′ll discover creative solutions to interesting digital instructional design challenges from real classrooms and real students. These best practice models will help any teacher, new or experienced, formulate a blueprint for digital learning experience design - with a tremendous emphasis on learning and cognitive engagement. I especially love the connections made in Chapter 5 with technology and questions. Through this book, John and Terri demonstrate that they are two highly connected teachers who ′get it.′" "John and Terri turn the bubble-sheet culture on its head – offering readers a path for implementing rigorous and engaging tasks that promote meaning making and sustained learning.  Through Powerful Task Design, they provide a way of thinking about our main goal in the classroom – creating rigorous and engaging tasks that power up learning.  I love this book!  The cognitive demand, thinking strategies, and engaging qualities of this book WILL change the way I interact with my own learners…and my two small children."