CATESOL Book Review: Mindful Teaching with Technology: Digital Diligence in the English Language Arts, Grades 6–12 by Troy Hicks
06/18/2026
Michelle Skowbo
By Gumok Seo
Chapter 1: The Case for Digital Diligence in the English Language Arts Classroom
Hicks opens the chapter by addressing a familiar concern that technology often distracts rather than enhances learning. In response, he argues that true digital diligence extends beyond simple tool use, emphasizing that students must master reading, writing, communication, and meaningful participation across digital environments. Rather than treating technology as merely a set of tools, he challenges educators to cultivate students who engage online with thoughtfulness, responsibility, and ethical awareness. The interlude, “From Synchronous to Real Time; from Asynchronous to Anytime,” reinforces this idea by demonstrating how learning can meaningfully extend across multiple times and spaces, both inside and outside the classroom.
Chapter 2: Planning for Purposeful Arcs of Instruction
Chapter 2 highlights the importance of designing instruction that moves beyond isolated lessons and instead focuses on purposeful arcs of instruction. Hicks defines purposeful arcs of instruction as flexible structures that can function effectively in face-to-face, online, and hybrid learning environments while remaining intentionally designed to support meaningful student engagement. This design is guided by careful consideration of four variables: time, topic, technique, and technology.
For instance, meaningful learning occurs through proactive engagement with content by annotating texts, engaging in online discussion, and completing assessment activities. To support this, Hicks provides examples of both asynchronous and synchronous instruction to promote students’ active engagement through the integration of various technologies. In particular, two tools that stand out are Wakelet and Zotero, which can be used by both teachers and students to curate content and resources. Given the overwhelming amount of information available on the web, curating, saving, and documenting resources play an important role in developing media literacy for 21st- century learners. Specifically, Wakelet is a user-friendly platform for organizing and sharing links and resources, while Zotero enables users to efficiently generate citations, build and manage comprehensive bibliographies, and store documents for future reference.
Furthermore, Hicks emphasizes several ways to promote deeper student engagement with content, including having students wrestle with ideas, ask deeper questions, and actively construct understanding through both real-time and asynchronous learning experiences. To support this, Hicks addresses three key approaches: (a) mapping tools, such as WiseMapping, to visually organize thinking; (b) question formulation techniques that stimulate divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking; and (c) “critical friends” protocols to foster meaningful face-to-face discussion. In short, these approaches encourage students to take an active role in their own learning and move beyond passive consumption of content.
Chapter 3: Protecting Privacy
In Chapter 3, Hicks addresses the growing importance of online privacy and the lasting impact of students’ digital actions. Every online interaction contributes to a digital footprint, and personal data is frequently collected and used by websites and platforms without users’ full awareness. To help students become more conscious of their interests, usage, and research habits, Hicks introduces Web Historian, a Google Chrome-based tool that tracks and visualizes personal search patterns through sections such as Search Term, Network, and Time Heatmap. Importantly, Web Historian does not store any personal data, making it a safe and practical tool for classroom use.
Beyond tracking digital behavior, Hicks discusses strategies for protecting privacy and improving concentration online. These include adjusting privacy settings, using ad blockers, and minimizing digital distractions to create safer, more focused learning environments. As a specific example, he highlights Privacy Badger, a browser extension that automatically blocks invisible trackers and advertisements. In addition, he encourages students to compare search results across platforms, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and to make use of advanced search tools, including Google Search Education, DuckDuckGo, and EBSCO, in order to strengthen their research skills. In sum, these practices help students become more informed, cautious, and responsible digital users.
Chapter 4: Maximizing Our Own Attention
In Chapter 4, Hicks emphasizes the importance of understanding how technology influences attention and developing intentional habits that support concentration and productivity. To teach students how to interact with digital text purposefully, he introduces several strategies for reducing on-screen clutter. One approach is to activate Reader View, a feature that strips away distracting elements and presents text in a print-like format. While this function is built into browsers such as Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge, and Mozilla’s Firefox, Google Chrome users need to install a separate extension to access it.
In addition to managing the reading environment, Hicks introduces Feedly as a tool for students to organize and monitor their digital reading resources. Feedly aggregates and tracks content from selected sources, helping students stay current on a research topic or subject of interest. While it serves a similar organizational purpose, Feedly differs from Wakelet (introduced in Chapter 2) in that it focuses on continuously updating and aggregating new content, whereas Wakelet is primarily used to save, organize, and collaboratively share links and resources.
Hicks also stresses the value of self-monitoring screen time as a way to cultivate greater attention in an endless online environment. One activity he describes involves having students create a visual map of websites and platforms where they spend the most time, using graphic design tools such as Canva, Google Drawings, or Web Historian (introduced in Chapter 3). Using this visual as a starting point, students then engage in a guided classroom discussion about what they spend their time on and what they consume online, fostering awareness of their own digital behavior. Taken together, Hicks argues that digital diligence involves intentionally managing attention rather than allowing technology to control how time and focus are spent.
Chapter 5: Popping Filter Bubbles and Breaking Algorithms
Chapter 5 discusses how algorithms influence the information students encounter online. Hicks explains the concept of filter bubbles, which occur when search engines and social media platforms tailor content based on users’ behavior, often limiting exposure to diverse perspectives. Over time, this can quietly shape what students think is true, reinforcing what they already believe while shutting out perspectives they have never encountered.
To help students compare and evaluate sources across different perspectives, Hicks elaborates on three tools teachers can incorporate into their instruction: (a) NewsCompare; (b) Pew Political Typology Quiz and/or I Side With; and (c) AllSides. NewsCompare aggregates top stories and allows users to view how different media outlets frame their coverage of current events. Pew Political Typology Quiz and I Side With offer users insights into their own beliefs, raise awareness of personal bias, and encourage intentional exploration of multiple viewpoints. Going even further, AllSides provides media bias rating covering news and opinion content and includes a media aggregator bias chart to help readers situate sources within a broader political landscape.
Hicks also highlights the importance of teaching students to engage in both face-to-face and online conversation as a means of becoming digitally diligent citizens. To support this, he points to StoryCorps as a meaningful resource that offers thoughtfully designed question prompts to help people with differing political perspectives listen to and share one another’s stories. As a classroom activity, teachers create two versions of a social media conversation: one that is civil and constructive, and another that is negative and uncivil. After participating in both versions, students engage in a guided classroom discussion using the provided reflection questions. Through this activity, Hicks emphasizes the importance of respectful digital communication, where active listening and thoughtful questioning support civil discourse and deeper understanding of perspectives beyond one’s own.
Chapter 6: Understanding How Knowledge Gets Created and Circulated
Chapter 6 focuses on helping students understand how information is created, shared, and circulated in digital spaces. Hicks emphasizes the importance of evaluating sources for credibility, accuracy, and reliability before using them to support arguments. To support this, Hicks provides guiding questions for evaluating Wikipedia pages, such as “when and how many edits have occurred, when the most recent edit occurred, how many total editors and page watchers the page has, how many reference are available to outside sources.”
Hicks further explains that digital diligence includes organizing sources, documenting research appropriately, and managing information responsibly. In this chapter, he expands on ZoteroBib as a bibliographic management tool that helps students keep track of their sources. Although ZoteroBib is most often used in higher education, Hicks suggests it can be introduced to students in grades 6-12 as a way to document their resources properly. The interlude, “Repurposing Existing Materials and a Brief Overview of Copyright, Fair Use, Creative Commons, and the Public Domain,” reinforces ethical participation in digital spaces by encouraging legal and respectful use of digital content.
Chapter 7: Extending Opportunities for Digital Writing
Chapter 7 expands the concept of digital writing across many media forms, exploring purposes and processes that go beyond traditional word processing and presentation tools. To illustrate this, Hicks presents Adobe Spark – including Spark Post, Spark Page, and Spark Video – as a one-stop shop platform for research projects. For example, students can focus on the technique of advertising and propaganda over time by creating an entire social media campaign, producing a video, and turning a research-based essay into a website, all within a cohesive assignment sequence.
Hicks encourages teachers to provide students with varied platforms for expression, such as digital storytelling, mapping projects, and interactive timelines. As one example, he elaborates on instructional activities using StoryMapJS. By writing about a literary character’s journey, or mapping an author’s landmarks in StoryMapJS, students demonstrate their interpretation and analysis while deepening their knowledge and understanding of the text. Another form of extended digital writing Hicks discusses is telling stories with timelines using TimelineJS, which allows students to integrate multimedia in a persuasive and engaging manner. Once published, a URL for the timeline is generated and can be shared on a blog or webpage. Any chronological subject matter - whether a piece of literature, historical events, influential authors or artists, or even events from a student’s own family history - serves as a fitting opportunity for students to synthesize information and develop a well-supported argument. All in all, Hicks demonstrates how digital writing can deepen engagement in the writing process, foster greater student ownership, and reach authentic audiences.
Chapter 8: Embracing Opportunities for Connected Reading
Chapter 8 explores how technology supports connected reading by enabling students to respond to texts in a variety of ways, including digital annotation, collaborative notetaking, and multimedia responses. To begin, Hicks addresses screencasting tools such as Screencastify as a means of encouraging active interaction with texts. Specifically, the first activity Hicks addresses involves having students record a think-aloud process while reading. With guiding questions prepared in advance, students read a text aloud and record themselves as a way of connecting with, questioning, and extending their own ideas from the text. Building on this, Hicks describes an activity in which students use ThingLink to create a multimedia text analysis, annotating a text by embedding additional resources, texts, and media links directly onto an image or document.
Beyond individual response activities, Hicks emphasizes the importance of creating opportunities for students to engage in meaningful conversations about what they read as an essential component of meaning-making in both face-to-face and online learning environments. In particular, he argues that fostering dialogue among students is critical to achieving deeper engagement with a text. To support this process, he offers instructional protocols designed to facilitate structured discussions and prompt deeper thinking, encouraging students to respond thoughtfully to their classmates’ ideas. Furthermore, Hicks explains how students can remix classic canonical texts that are freely available in the public domain to support the development of digital literacy. In doing so, students become more critical, reflective, and connected readers who engage with texts as active participants in meaning-making.
Chapter 9: Conclusion
In the final chapter, Hicks urges educators to embrace digital diligence by making intentional, pedagogically sound decisions about technology use. He emphasizes that mindful teaching with technology is not about using more tools, but rather about using the right tools in ways that meaningfully support literacy development and student learning. Furthermore, purposeful instructional arcs, combined with thoughtful integration of real-time and asynchronous learning, help maintain strong teacher-student connections while promoting deeper thinking and reflection. Above all, Hicks reminds educators that technology should serve the learning, not the other way around.
Conclusion
Overall, Mindful Teaching with Technology provides educators with practical, classroom-ready strategies for fostering digital diligence in ELA instruction. Through thoughtful examples and practical guiding questions for teaching points, Hicks demonstrates how teachers can help students critically engage with digital texts, evaluate information responsibly, and communicate effectively in online spaces. The book challenges educators to move beyond superficial technology integration and instead design meaningful, purposeful, and student-centered learning experiences that prepare students to navigate an increasingly digital world with confidence and care.
Michelle Skowbo
Mindful Teaching with Technology: Digital Diligence in the English Language Arts, Grades 6–12 by Troy Hicks
By Gumok Seo
Introduction
In Mindful Teaching with Technology, Troy Hicks defines digital diligence as the productive, meaningful, and responsible use of technology across both face-to-face and online learning environments. Written specifically for English language arts teachers in grades 6–12, the book emphasizes that technology should support purposeful instruction in reading, writing, critical thinking, and discussion rather than being added simply for convenience or novelty. Throughout the text, Hicks offers practical teaching strategies, guiding questions, and reviews of websites and tools that teachers can apply in their classrooms.Chapter 1: The Case for Digital Diligence in the English Language Arts Classroom
Hicks opens the chapter by addressing a familiar concern that technology often distracts rather than enhances learning. In response, he argues that true digital diligence extends beyond simple tool use, emphasizing that students must master reading, writing, communication, and meaningful participation across digital environments. Rather than treating technology as merely a set of tools, he challenges educators to cultivate students who engage online with thoughtfulness, responsibility, and ethical awareness. The interlude, “From Synchronous to Real Time; from Asynchronous to Anytime,” reinforces this idea by demonstrating how learning can meaningfully extend across multiple times and spaces, both inside and outside the classroom.
Chapter 2: Planning for Purposeful Arcs of Instruction
Chapter 2 highlights the importance of designing instruction that moves beyond isolated lessons and instead focuses on purposeful arcs of instruction. Hicks defines purposeful arcs of instruction as flexible structures that can function effectively in face-to-face, online, and hybrid learning environments while remaining intentionally designed to support meaningful student engagement. This design is guided by careful consideration of four variables: time, topic, technique, and technology.
For instance, meaningful learning occurs through proactive engagement with content by annotating texts, engaging in online discussion, and completing assessment activities. To support this, Hicks provides examples of both asynchronous and synchronous instruction to promote students’ active engagement through the integration of various technologies. In particular, two tools that stand out are Wakelet and Zotero, which can be used by both teachers and students to curate content and resources. Given the overwhelming amount of information available on the web, curating, saving, and documenting resources play an important role in developing media literacy for 21st- century learners. Specifically, Wakelet is a user-friendly platform for organizing and sharing links and resources, while Zotero enables users to efficiently generate citations, build and manage comprehensive bibliographies, and store documents for future reference.
Furthermore, Hicks emphasizes several ways to promote deeper student engagement with content, including having students wrestle with ideas, ask deeper questions, and actively construct understanding through both real-time and asynchronous learning experiences. To support this, Hicks addresses three key approaches: (a) mapping tools, such as WiseMapping, to visually organize thinking; (b) question formulation techniques that stimulate divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking; and (c) “critical friends” protocols to foster meaningful face-to-face discussion. In short, these approaches encourage students to take an active role in their own learning and move beyond passive consumption of content.
Chapter 3: Protecting Privacy
In Chapter 3, Hicks addresses the growing importance of online privacy and the lasting impact of students’ digital actions. Every online interaction contributes to a digital footprint, and personal data is frequently collected and used by websites and platforms without users’ full awareness. To help students become more conscious of their interests, usage, and research habits, Hicks introduces Web Historian, a Google Chrome-based tool that tracks and visualizes personal search patterns through sections such as Search Term, Network, and Time Heatmap. Importantly, Web Historian does not store any personal data, making it a safe and practical tool for classroom use.
Beyond tracking digital behavior, Hicks discusses strategies for protecting privacy and improving concentration online. These include adjusting privacy settings, using ad blockers, and minimizing digital distractions to create safer, more focused learning environments. As a specific example, he highlights Privacy Badger, a browser extension that automatically blocks invisible trackers and advertisements. In addition, he encourages students to compare search results across platforms, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and to make use of advanced search tools, including Google Search Education, DuckDuckGo, and EBSCO, in order to strengthen their research skills. In sum, these practices help students become more informed, cautious, and responsible digital users.
Chapter 4: Maximizing Our Own Attention
In Chapter 4, Hicks emphasizes the importance of understanding how technology influences attention and developing intentional habits that support concentration and productivity. To teach students how to interact with digital text purposefully, he introduces several strategies for reducing on-screen clutter. One approach is to activate Reader View, a feature that strips away distracting elements and presents text in a print-like format. While this function is built into browsers such as Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge, and Mozilla’s Firefox, Google Chrome users need to install a separate extension to access it.
In addition to managing the reading environment, Hicks introduces Feedly as a tool for students to organize and monitor their digital reading resources. Feedly aggregates and tracks content from selected sources, helping students stay current on a research topic or subject of interest. While it serves a similar organizational purpose, Feedly differs from Wakelet (introduced in Chapter 2) in that it focuses on continuously updating and aggregating new content, whereas Wakelet is primarily used to save, organize, and collaboratively share links and resources.
Hicks also stresses the value of self-monitoring screen time as a way to cultivate greater attention in an endless online environment. One activity he describes involves having students create a visual map of websites and platforms where they spend the most time, using graphic design tools such as Canva, Google Drawings, or Web Historian (introduced in Chapter 3). Using this visual as a starting point, students then engage in a guided classroom discussion about what they spend their time on and what they consume online, fostering awareness of their own digital behavior. Taken together, Hicks argues that digital diligence involves intentionally managing attention rather than allowing technology to control how time and focus are spent.
Chapter 5: Popping Filter Bubbles and Breaking Algorithms
Chapter 5 discusses how algorithms influence the information students encounter online. Hicks explains the concept of filter bubbles, which occur when search engines and social media platforms tailor content based on users’ behavior, often limiting exposure to diverse perspectives. Over time, this can quietly shape what students think is true, reinforcing what they already believe while shutting out perspectives they have never encountered.
To help students compare and evaluate sources across different perspectives, Hicks elaborates on three tools teachers can incorporate into their instruction: (a) NewsCompare; (b) Pew Political Typology Quiz and/or I Side With; and (c) AllSides. NewsCompare aggregates top stories and allows users to view how different media outlets frame their coverage of current events. Pew Political Typology Quiz and I Side With offer users insights into their own beliefs, raise awareness of personal bias, and encourage intentional exploration of multiple viewpoints. Going even further, AllSides provides media bias rating covering news and opinion content and includes a media aggregator bias chart to help readers situate sources within a broader political landscape.
Hicks also highlights the importance of teaching students to engage in both face-to-face and online conversation as a means of becoming digitally diligent citizens. To support this, he points to StoryCorps as a meaningful resource that offers thoughtfully designed question prompts to help people with differing political perspectives listen to and share one another’s stories. As a classroom activity, teachers create two versions of a social media conversation: one that is civil and constructive, and another that is negative and uncivil. After participating in both versions, students engage in a guided classroom discussion using the provided reflection questions. Through this activity, Hicks emphasizes the importance of respectful digital communication, where active listening and thoughtful questioning support civil discourse and deeper understanding of perspectives beyond one’s own.
Chapter 6: Understanding How Knowledge Gets Created and Circulated
Chapter 6 focuses on helping students understand how information is created, shared, and circulated in digital spaces. Hicks emphasizes the importance of evaluating sources for credibility, accuracy, and reliability before using them to support arguments. To support this, Hicks provides guiding questions for evaluating Wikipedia pages, such as “when and how many edits have occurred, when the most recent edit occurred, how many total editors and page watchers the page has, how many reference are available to outside sources.”
Hicks further explains that digital diligence includes organizing sources, documenting research appropriately, and managing information responsibly. In this chapter, he expands on ZoteroBib as a bibliographic management tool that helps students keep track of their sources. Although ZoteroBib is most often used in higher education, Hicks suggests it can be introduced to students in grades 6-12 as a way to document their resources properly. The interlude, “Repurposing Existing Materials and a Brief Overview of Copyright, Fair Use, Creative Commons, and the Public Domain,” reinforces ethical participation in digital spaces by encouraging legal and respectful use of digital content.
Chapter 7: Extending Opportunities for Digital Writing
Chapter 7 expands the concept of digital writing across many media forms, exploring purposes and processes that go beyond traditional word processing and presentation tools. To illustrate this, Hicks presents Adobe Spark – including Spark Post, Spark Page, and Spark Video – as a one-stop shop platform for research projects. For example, students can focus on the technique of advertising and propaganda over time by creating an entire social media campaign, producing a video, and turning a research-based essay into a website, all within a cohesive assignment sequence.
Hicks encourages teachers to provide students with varied platforms for expression, such as digital storytelling, mapping projects, and interactive timelines. As one example, he elaborates on instructional activities using StoryMapJS. By writing about a literary character’s journey, or mapping an author’s landmarks in StoryMapJS, students demonstrate their interpretation and analysis while deepening their knowledge and understanding of the text. Another form of extended digital writing Hicks discusses is telling stories with timelines using TimelineJS, which allows students to integrate multimedia in a persuasive and engaging manner. Once published, a URL for the timeline is generated and can be shared on a blog or webpage. Any chronological subject matter - whether a piece of literature, historical events, influential authors or artists, or even events from a student’s own family history - serves as a fitting opportunity for students to synthesize information and develop a well-supported argument. All in all, Hicks demonstrates how digital writing can deepen engagement in the writing process, foster greater student ownership, and reach authentic audiences.
Chapter 8: Embracing Opportunities for Connected Reading
Chapter 8 explores how technology supports connected reading by enabling students to respond to texts in a variety of ways, including digital annotation, collaborative notetaking, and multimedia responses. To begin, Hicks addresses screencasting tools such as Screencastify as a means of encouraging active interaction with texts. Specifically, the first activity Hicks addresses involves having students record a think-aloud process while reading. With guiding questions prepared in advance, students read a text aloud and record themselves as a way of connecting with, questioning, and extending their own ideas from the text. Building on this, Hicks describes an activity in which students use ThingLink to create a multimedia text analysis, annotating a text by embedding additional resources, texts, and media links directly onto an image or document.
Beyond individual response activities, Hicks emphasizes the importance of creating opportunities for students to engage in meaningful conversations about what they read as an essential component of meaning-making in both face-to-face and online learning environments. In particular, he argues that fostering dialogue among students is critical to achieving deeper engagement with a text. To support this process, he offers instructional protocols designed to facilitate structured discussions and prompt deeper thinking, encouraging students to respond thoughtfully to their classmates’ ideas. Furthermore, Hicks explains how students can remix classic canonical texts that are freely available in the public domain to support the development of digital literacy. In doing so, students become more critical, reflective, and connected readers who engage with texts as active participants in meaning-making.
Chapter 9: Conclusion
In the final chapter, Hicks urges educators to embrace digital diligence by making intentional, pedagogically sound decisions about technology use. He emphasizes that mindful teaching with technology is not about using more tools, but rather about using the right tools in ways that meaningfully support literacy development and student learning. Furthermore, purposeful instructional arcs, combined with thoughtful integration of real-time and asynchronous learning, help maintain strong teacher-student connections while promoting deeper thinking and reflection. Above all, Hicks reminds educators that technology should serve the learning, not the other way around.
Conclusion
Overall, Mindful Teaching with Technology provides educators with practical, classroom-ready strategies for fostering digital diligence in ELA instruction. Through thoughtful examples and practical guiding questions for teaching points, Hicks demonstrates how teachers can help students critically engage with digital texts, evaluate information responsibly, and communicate effectively in online spaces. The book challenges educators to move beyond superficial technology integration and instead design meaningful, purposeful, and student-centered learning experiences that prepare students to navigate an increasingly digital world with confidence and care.