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But the task of co-creating their learning — not just the tools that make the task engaging to young learners

the pedagogy comes first

One-to-one technology is great when you have it, but with this collaborative approach, instead of thinking about giving every student pencil, paper and laptop, put all your assets on the table and look at how you can put them together — including skill assets.

what does a group of people need to know about pedagogy in order to self-organize into a peer learning community? 

Attitudes and methods are essential, too.

ersuasion - when everybo

n recent years, there has been explosive growth in students creating, manipulating, and sharing content online (National School Boards Association, 2007). Recognizing the educational value of encouraging such behaviors, many school leaders have shifted their energies from limiting the use of these technologies to limiting their abuse. As with any other behavior, when schools teach and set expectations for appropriate technology use, students rise to meet the expectations. Such conditions allow educators to focus on, in the words of social technology guru Howard Rheingold (n.d.), educating “children about the necessity for critical thinking and [encouraging] them to exercise their own knowledge of how to make moral choices." One process for creating the necessary conditions is reported in From Fear to Facebook, the first-person account of one California principal who endured a series of false starts to finally arrive at a place where students in his school were maximizing their use of laptops and participatory technologies without the constant distractions of misuse (Levinson, 2010). Other similar processes and programs are emerging, and they all share a common theme: an education that fails to account for the use of social media tools prepares students well for the past, but not for their future.