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We are beginning to see some schools across the country take the lead in merging sound pedagogy with the effective integration of technology.  These schools and educators, whether they realize it or not, are not only enhancing the teaching and learning process, but they are also providing their learners with essential skill sets pivotal for success in today’s society.  These skill sets include critical thinking/problem solving, media literacy, collaboration, creativity, technological proficiency, and global awareness.  The ultimate result with this shift has been increases in engagement as well as a sense of relevancy and meaning amongst learners, all of which are foundations for improving achievement.

Google Apps' ­productivity and collaboration tools, and connect to the Moodle course management system, where they can access ­reading materials and other course ­content and participate in discussion forums and live chats.

To implement BYOD successfully, Gartner Research Director Bill Rust says every school must do the following:

offers five blended high school courses in English and health education

Professional development also is helping educators learn new teaching techniques that are technology-centric

Schools that are embracing BYOD are working to ­incorporate technology into their curriculum

Early BYOD Adopters Share Lessons Learned

Professional development is important. Hanover's educational technology staff holds a training session every Tuesday, Fry says. The district also built a wiki to educate teachers about using technology in the classroom.

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“Unlike some younger tech startups, we don’t think the goal is to replace the teacher,” says Laster, the company’s chief digital officer. “We think education is inherently social, and that students need to learn from well-trained and well-versed teachers. But we also know that that time together, shoulder-to-shoulder, is more and more costly, and more and more precious.”

For technology to be not only integrated effectively but also embraced, a culture needs to be established where teachers and administrators are no longer fearful of giving up a certain amount of control to students

Many educators fear technology as they feel there is not or will not be the appropriate level of training to support implementation.

they are given direction and purposeful tasks to complete with the technology, and it is used for tasks that generally cannot be achieved through other means.

tech for learning

As long as these technologies exist and continue to move forward, we as educators have an obligation to teach responsible and thoughtful use of these tools.

A third approach awaits us: establishing proactive, aggressive character education programs tuned to digital youth.

Issues of Digital Citizenship

the very real task of connecting them more closely to their coursework, to their teachers and to each other.

One of the best ways to do this is to use technology to collect data that tells us where they're strong and where they're weak, how they learn best, and use this data to create personalized pathways

The simplest reason why we should continue our push to bring technology to our classrooms is also the best one: it works

we must listen to feedback from our teachers and make sure that they have the training and support they need to implement this technology effectively.

understanding what it is we want students to be able to do, the measures of success, the resources we have to work with, and our own sense of possibility.

Different schools may take different approaches to combining these components

The Information Age has facilitated a reinvention of nearly every industry except for education. It's time to unhinge ourselves from many of the assumptions that undergird how we deliver instruction and begin to design new models that are better able to leverage talent, time, and technology to best meet the unique needs of each student