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On the other hand, I work with teachers now that are often running scared – very scared at times. They are blocked from using much technology, teachers that use drill and skills based software are praised, those that ask about doing anything online are scoffed at … they have to go out of their way and jump through 5 hoops all the time knowing that if things aren’t 100% smooth they will be questioned about safety, educational value, whether they have their students best interest and safety in mind and on and on. They are told (in error) that they will lose the district their e-Rate funding by having student work online or even have students working online … COPA laws will be broken, … in some schools and districts its not about making teachers integrate technology, its making administration, politicians and others see it as having value and creating an environment where it is at least OK and at best encouraged and supported. I never thought I would write such a comment, but believe me it is very ugly in places … I support 6 school districts, about 100,000 students and 8-10,000 teachers … some districts and some schools are very open and supportive of tech integration, others are extremely scared of all the things that they’ve heard of, more so than I would have thought. Good news is we are starting to make real progress … much too slowly, but progress. Yes, tech integration should not be an option, but there are still many places where it is not an option really. That’s the thinking we still need to overcome.

The Internet is embedded in and encompasses virtually all of human life, positive, negative and neutral.

All that happens online is much more symptomatic (sometimes an early warning system) than a cause of social problems that we’ve been working on addressing since long before we had the Internet.

It’s multitasking while learning that has the biggest potential downside

80 percent of college students admit to texting during class; 15 percent say they send 11 or more texts in a single class period.

Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learnin

"At a time when games are becoming ever more realistic, reality is becoming more gamelike."

The problem is not that games are inconsistent with many aspects of our lives; it is that they provide a limited and skewed lens on the world

It stresses the strategic interdependent interests of humans and assumes that in games there is always a rational choice which is the best counter-choice to your opponent's.

The people who concentrate wealth don't do things just out of the goodness of their hearts for the most part, but in order to maintain their position of dominance and then extend their power.

One can at least be suspicious that skyrocketing student debt is a device of indoctrination. It's very hard to imagine that there's any economic reason for it. Other countries' education is free, like Mexico's, and that is a poor country.

There are a lot of factors. And one of them, probably, is just that students are trapped.

“Ultimately, flipping a classroom involves shifting the energy away from the instructor and toward the students and then leveraging educational tools to enhance the learning environment.”

This allows students to spend time problem solving, creating, critiquing, and synthesizing in class with their peers and with their instructor. Students are more active in flipped environments which add a new level of complexity to the classroom.

Instructors focus on higher level learning outcomes during class time and lower level outcomes outside of class

social comparison.

"When you're on a site like Facebook, you get lots of posts about what people are doing. That sets up social comparison — you maybe feel your life is not as full and rich as those people you see on Facebook," he says.

"It suggests that when you are engaging in social interactions a lot, you're more aware of what others are doing and, consequently, you might be more sensitized about what's happening on Facebook and comparing that to your own life,"

SnapChat is publicity ... with privacy

SnapChat isn’t really ephemeral – and the likelihood that SnapChat photos will get captured and stored permanently is growing each day.

Snaps for a time, contrary to its stated policy of deleting them once they have been opened

Entrepreneurs

disrupting an industry

K-12 isn’t working

Learning and play are one and the same to kids; it’s we adults who have been conditioned to believe that play is the opposite of work, a time-waster. In fact, the opposite of play is not work but depression

Joy is a much a sign of learning as concentration. Look for how much joy is involved in what they’re doing

"Flipped learning is a bridge from traditional teaching methods which are heavily dependent on content, to more engaging learning methods that focus primarily on the acts of thinking and learning."

this approach "does not require content mastery prior to embarking on the creative or evaluative process, but allows access to content whenever it becomes necessary during the process."

If you are in the position to make policies that impact educators, you better get into their classrooms, learn, and understand their world. —