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Does this jettisoning of time-honored titles mean that the paperless classroom is also lacking a creator, controller and grader?  Is the paperless classroom also a teacherless paradigm?  The answer is in some regards, yes.  I have removed myself from center stage.  I have relinquished the need to control every class.  I have stopped seeing work as stagnant…completed and submitted by students and then graded by me.  I have let go of my need to pre-plan months at a time, in favor of following the path that unfolds as we learn together.  My classes are not, however, teacherless, just less about the teaching and more about the learning.  The students know that I am ready and willing to be student to their insights, that they can teach, create, control and even evaluate their own learning.

In the absence of my control, the students have many choices to make

Teachers often say that modern students are lazy.  I have long felt that as the shifting winds of technology began to gain force, we teachers were the ones who were unwilling to do the work of rethinking our roles and meeting the students were they were learning already.  Rethinking paper as the primary tool of class is a step in the right direction because it forces a rethinking of the how and why of teaching and learning.

first 60 seconds of your presentation is

Summers and other leaders from various companies were not necessarily complaining about young people's poor grammar, punctuation, or spelling—the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools

the complaints I heard most frequently were about fuzzy thinking and young people not knowing how to write with a real voice.

To me it really brought home how artificial speeches about canned subjects in front of a class are little to no preparation about talking to people naturally in a real-world setting. It’s like the students are only good at “pretend speaking”

(These types of schooly speeches also unconsciously perpetuate the teacher-centered model of 20th century classrooms, with students being trained to carry that largely stultifying ritual into the future.) 

Ours is a century of sharing ideas, and sharing the stage, with the audience. (I’ll resist the Speech 2.0 label.)

The parties I have been going to are those of educators who are interested in web 2.0 where I feel I have little to contribute because I am at the stage of of learning about web 2.0.

The main reason for this lurking was that I didn't want to open my mouth and offend anyone, or waste people's time with trivialities.

Nevertheless, I try to minimize my personal and social comments and keep my messages to professional topics.

where students create community content for the global stage.

First, it allows teachers to step off the stage and start listening and conversing instead of just lecturing. Second, the teacher can encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the teacher’s information. Third, the teacher can encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the school. Finally, the teacher can tailor the style of education to their students’ individual learning styles.