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"Technology is unavoidable, and while some teachers may still feel hesitant about the changes that are coming fast and furiously in the wake of these advancements, most teachers want to embrace the potential. Teachers that are successfully integrating educational technology in their classrooms are beacons for their peers - and there is much they can teach us. Teachers who are successfully using edtech to grow their students share these ten important traits"

"Edtech is making is easier and more efficient to help students at every level, and to bring even the most timid of learners out of their shells. Dr. Kenneth Shore, a psychologist and Chair of a child study team for the Hamilton, New Jersey Public Schools, explains that "Low self-esteem can lessen a student's desire to learn, his or her ability to focus, and his or her willingness to take risks. Positive self-esteem, on the other hand, is one of the building blocks of school success; it provides a firm foundation for learning."

"I was approached by a teacher who had never redesigned her lessons to take advantage of edtech's potential to transform learning. She was still stuck in the $1,000 pencil phase of using new tools to do traditional work. When I showed examples of how teachers around the country were challenging students to design and find solutions to their own problems, she immediately saw the benefit of shifting her thinking. The good news was that she was reconsidering her beliefs and was now convinced that she had been underestimating her students. The bad news is, she was afraid of appearing vulnerable in front of her students if something went wrong." It is okay to not know everything about technology. Many times your students know more than you do...and that is okay!

"We want to prepare our students to lead productive and successful lives once they leave us and enter into the realm of adulthood. But what lies ahead for our students in the future? Did educators of twenty years ago know that so much of our world would be based on computers and technology now? Could they have known what skills would be needed in the job market today? Unlikely, but yet they had to do their best to prepare their students for this world anyhow."

"Indeed, a host of national and regional surveys suggest that teachers are far more likely to use technology to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning. Case study after case study describe a common pattern inside schools: A handful of "early adopters" embrace innovative uses of new technology, while their colleagues make incremental or no changes to what they already do."