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lives in a moment when personalizing the learning experience is not just a possibility—it's almost an expectation

The ability to learn what we want, when we want, with whomever we want as long as we have access creates a huge push against a system of education steeped in time-and-place learning.

we need to fundamentally rethink what we do in the classroom with kids

It is NOT Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, or any other online community that is the problem. It is the people who are out of touch with today's youth.

All I can say is AMEN! I blogged about this last year, as a matter of fact, because it ticks me off that we would have all of this great technology, but NOT use it for expanded educational opportunities that we might not have otherwise had. I love extended the teachable moment beyond the "year" that I'm given with a set of students. Just because they've come and gone doesn't mean my responsibility to continue to teach them if the opportunity presents itself is over. I am a teacher. Not from 7:30 to 2:30. Not just on the weekdays. Not just in my classroom. I am a teacher ALL. OF. THE. TIME. Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, whether physical or virtual. We should be more worried about the teachers (and critics) who aren't nearly so well connected

"teachers should have have relations with students, not a relationship."

One final comment, a funny one.  On Monday, in my "Twenty-First Century Literacies" class where laptops are required for a whole range of experiments and inclass collaborative work, I caught one of my students with his laptop open and with a book propped secretly inside it, reading away in his book when he should have been paying attention.   So maybe that's the next class, "Should Professors Allow Students to Use BOOKS in the Classroom Devised for Computer Learning?"   I'm being facetious but that's the point.  A book is a technology too.   How and when we use any technology and for what purpose are the questions we all need to ask.

Do you see the difference?   "Computer learning" doesn't exist.   In 2011, it exists less than it did a decade ago and, in a few years, that phrase won't exist at all.   Students learn.  Computers are tools for all kinds of things, from checking the Facebook page, to making notetaking easier, to being fact checking or calculating devices that can take a class to a more sophisticated level to interactive social networking devices that can either distract a class or allow for new forms of group collaboration.   There are many other uses as well.   The point is that most profs have (a) simply "adapted" (as a colleague told me recently) to computers without understanding the intellectual and pedagogical changes they can enable; or (b) resigned themselves to their present, gleefully or resentflly; or (c) made them into a pedagogical tool; or (d) all of the above.    

We used money from our technology budget and constructed a model to supply teachers with a mix of mobile devices, mostly laptops and iPads, and teachers applied to take part in a mixed device technology-integration pilot program.

like a traditional 1:1 program, devices are spread to students throughout the room, but instead of each student receiving an assigned device, classes are left to select the appropriate tool for every assignment.

Teachers are now free to explore innovative and creative ways to structure their time, activities, lessons and interactions with students.

We will continue to build on using the iPads as a relevant learning device and to further develop and explore innovative ways and methods to best utilise them as tools for teaching and learning. Through the continued DEECD iPads 4 Learning trial Evaluation, i am sure that the data we gather from this will certainly give a great insight in to iPads for Learning.

Giving students the option to direct their own learning goes a very long way in giving them ownership of the task. It allows them to play to their strengths and their learning styles. This in turn increases engagement and with the massive amount of creative app’s available for students to use, this can only be a positive.