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If at some point in the fairly near future just about every high school kid is going to have a device that connects to the Internet, how much longer can we ask them to stuff it in their lockers at the beginning of the day? How are we going to have to rethink the idea that we have to provide our kids a connection? Can we even somewhat get our brains around the idea of letting them use their own? At what point do we get out of the business of troubleshooting and fixing technology? Isn’t “fixing your own stuff” a 21st Century skill? How are we helping our teachers understand the potentials of phones and all of these shifts in general?

It is unfortunate that in the 21st century many schools have deemed adolescent socialization among each other or with their teachers as inappropriate. This is the pervasive outlook despite the fact that educators are fully aware that 1) A healthy part of adolescent development includes socialization and 2) Research from those like the National School Board Association indicate that most students use social media to discuss educational topics and other studies (like this one from the CCSE) indicate students who are using social media to discuss schoolwork perform better.

There's a simple reason for it: we rarely take the time to pause, breathe, and think about what's working and what's not. There's just too much to do and no time to reflect. I was once asked: if an organization could teach only one thing to its employees, what single thing would have the most impact? My answer was immediate and clear: teach people how to learn. How to look at their past behavior, figure out what worked, and repeat it while admitting honestly what didn't and change it.

"Learning is about the questions you ask, not the answers." 

all professionals need to be asking themselves how should our roles be changing such that we can ensure we are still offering a true “value-add?”

using technology to change learning is an exponentially harder nut to crack. It means asking teachers to rethink their classrooms and the way they do their work. I

if we have the courage and the vision to take it on, here’s the payoff: students experiencing excitement and engagement as they build personalized, global learning networks that they will have for the rest of their lives

Likewise, it is up to learning managers to determine when to ask students and teachers to turn their devices off; that is, to unplug so we can talk, think, and collaborate face to face. On/Off. It's balanced. It's healthy.

The fact that their technology is so invisible to them is their Achilles Heel. Because they don't see it, they don't think to question it.

Do American students have too much homework or too little? Neither, I’d say. We ought to be asking a different question altogether. What should matter to parents and educators is this: How effectively do children’s after-school assignments advance learning?