"They understand that the essential purpose of education and teaching is not to produce some set of core knowledge in a person, but rather to create the conditions in which a person can become an accomplished and motivated learner in their own right." I love that quote and it really is what the goal of a high quality education should be. Memorizing facts just does not meet the current reality that we live in where any fact can be looked up in an instant. It is about creating people that want to and are able to do something productive with those facts.

I also enjoyed reading this very practical discussion of how we increase connectivity amongst educators. It is pertinent to me as part of my professional development this year is to offer some training to staff so that they can better incorporate technology into the class room. The teachers are of varying digital literacy and have varying levels of interest in it. I think it is important to make it directly relevant to what they are teaching, easy to incorporate into their normal day and fun. I have seen some bad presentations that haven't gone over well with staff. The issues seemed to be that it was boring, it was something so far from the typical procedures or the presentation was focused on material/grade level that wasn't high school. The high school math or science teachers seem really put off by sitting through a 3 hour presentation where all the examples are for early elementary language arts. I hope my familiarity with the staff, school, students, and content will allow me to better reach my co-workers.