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The explosive growth of social media, smartphones and digital devices is transforming our kids' lives, in school and at home. Research tells us that even the youngest of our children are migrating online, using tablets and smartphones, downloading apps.

All adults know that the teen years are a critical time for identity exploration and experimentation. Yet this important developmental phase can be dramatically twisted when that identity experimentation, however personal and private, appears permanently on one's digital record for all to see.

Howard Gardner, a professor and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who developed the concept of multiple intelligences, calls kids' use of digital media and technology "epochal change." He compares the revolution in digital media to the invention of the printing press because of its extraordinary impact on the way we communicate, share information and interact with one another. As a society, we have no choice but to engage with this new reality and work to ensure that it affects our kids in healthy, responsible ways.

Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor mili

tary virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp

Students must still learn to communicate complex ideas. They must be able to create entire thoughts that run together in recognizable patterns in order to function in school and at work. Most importantly, they must be able to master this skill to participate as informed citizens in our shared civil discourse. Students who are flooded by facts think that the best way to answer a question is to search for more facts instead of organizing and marshalling the information they already have to develop a strong case. As long as the Internet is readily available, a search is faster and easier than a thoughtful and challenging discussion.

When my students learn to be nuanced, when they learn to listen carefully and find agreement, those are human tasks. When they learn to disagree carefully and logically, those are human tasks. These interactions that take place at the speed of conversation are essential building blocks for survival in the 21st or any other century.

PenCamp is a really fast way to quickly build a basic web page. Its perfect for writing and sharing stories, jokes, poems and more.Building a page requires no special skills. You just click the text and edit it. Of course, if you're a more advanced user, you can also add HTML.

The details of this chart are less important than the process of creating it. After playing with the iPad, reading/watching how others use it in the classroom, and trying it out with your own students, get together with a few other educators and fill out your own chart. Here's a blank chart we give out as a part of a Think-Pair-Share. You might want to divide it into sections and consider the affordances and constraints by user (teacher/student/special needs student/administrator), use (reading/word processing/movie making/note taking/etc.), subject, or taxonomy (Bloom/SAMR/etc.). Hopefully you'll revise the chart as you use the tool in a wider variety of ways. This can definitely be combined with ideas of balancing technology, content and pedagogy. (Check out this podcast on TPaCK and SAMR.)

Perhaps a better question is what would I do with them that I could not do with other tools that are available and cheaper?