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Students get used to giving and taking critique daily with each other and hearing it from educators as well. Their ease with it comes from practice and with the awareness that feedback isn’t the end of the process, it’s a part of improving their work.

When evaluating student work, frame feedback in terms of the learner’s goals instead of referring to the standards. “Goals are more motivating for students to hear,”

Students want projects to be integrated across subjects, not separated by discipline.

High Tech Middle Chula Vista seventh grader Ana de Almeida Amaral described an integrated humanities and math/science project, when students read Sherlock Holmes, wrote their own versions, and became experts in one aspect of forensics.

“I love when projects are integrated so you can find so many different aspects,”

Together they created a crime scene in their classroom and then taught everyone assembled about a part of the forensics process through a stop animation video.

“If teachers give broad guidelines for the project and then have students do something they’re interested in it will bring students along the whole time,” said Gramann. “Treat students like adults. If the students feel like they’re worth it they’ll act more like adults.”

“Teachers tend to give projects and benchmarks and create topics around things that students don’t really connect to.” He was adamant that learning how to connect a topic to oneself is the key to learning. “Throughout middle school you have to develop skills of how things connect to yourself,” he said.

Authentic choice is one aspect of allowing that to happen. Students on the panel described real choices they make about their education on a daily basis, from which book they’ll read in Humanities to the different topics they want to research.

“Collaborating productively is a leadership skill at this school,” said Dora Aguilar, a junior at City Arts and Tech, part of the Envision network. She says that while it can be hard, it can also be very rewarding because working with other people allows her to see the project through the eyes of her peers.

Other students talked about difficult collaborations too, emphasizing that it runs more smoothly if one group member agrees to keep everyone on track.

dedicated e-readers with e-ink technology are equivalent to print, as far as the mind is concerned. “

So should reading on tablets and laptops be avoided in classrooms? Not if a digital reading experience offers options for learners who need more support.

social media isn’t just for the kids. Educators can leverage these connections to their advantage.

In a recent study, teenagers originally from Mexico living in the US saw improvement in acquiring English skills through interacting within Facebook communities (Stewart, 2014). These adolescents also felt more supported and connected when they were able to communicate with others using their native language.

Sherry Turkle, a scientist from MIT, found that empathy can be reduced by up to 40% in college students when they prioritize online relationships over in person conversations (Turkle, 2015).

What we allow at school needs to be balanced with an awareness of the often unrestricted access students have at home and the community.

Integrating digital devices into the classroom tends to accentuate current instruction but does not improve poor practice (Toyoma, 2015)

college students who do not use a digital device during class show better understanding of the content taught compared to students who did (Shirkey, 2014)

In fact, the mere presence of a laptop or tablet was distracting to those around the student using technology.

Keep it simple. If the digital devices lack a natural point for integration, don’t shoehorn it in for the sake of making instruction “connected.” Pedagogy trumps technology.

Use technology. Not too much, at home and school. Mostly for learning.

Top-notch ISEE scores mean very little if the family unit is not a cultural match for the school.

If you want to dive into the thick of concepts tested, I strongly recommend downloading the guide. However, if you’re looking for something a bit more digestible, start with this post and do further reading at your leisure.

we need to be active, trusting, and respectful participants in the digital lives of young people.

Our young people are still learning their way around the digital landscape largely on their own — when what we need to do is confidently take them by the hand, show them how to look both ways, and cross the street with them — at least at first. That means staying up-to-date about digital safety, the rules of the road, and what’s going on in the neighborhood. Finally, we need to foster the kinds of personal relationships that encourage our kids to talk about where they are going and what they discover along the way (their successes as well as their mistakes) once we let them travel on their own.

y, “Digital Generation: Parents,” is a good place to start.

read Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus (on social media

Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken (on video games). If you want to try to keep up with the moving target of day-to-day digital parenting, I recommend Marti Weston’s information-packed, down-to-earth blog, Media! Tech! Parenting!

inspired by Adora Svitak,

Equally inspiring is nine-year-old Martha Payne, whose blog NeverSeconds, about the lunches served at her school in Scotland, sparked a national controversy about school nutrition that attracted the attention of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver

Some people call it a digital footprint, others a digital tattoo. As a parent, you are no doubt concerned about the possible missteps your children may take

the digital “brand” that will follow them for life.

although your children are already comfortable interacting online, they don’t yet necessarily know how to translate their skills into products that show them at their best

create “a portfolio of work that is both public and interactive, that reflects the potential of the online world and that serves as a solid foundation for a lifetime of participation online.”

Those of us in education need parents like you to be involved as active and open learners about the digital world, learners who can engage with us, their children and their children’s teachers, in much-needed conversations about digital matters.