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When we wag our fingers at students about inappropriate digital behaviors without concurrently and equally highlighting the benefits of being connected and online, we send the message that we are afraid of or don’t understand the technologies that are transforming everything around us.

2012-13, The US department of Commerce ranked 55 industry sectors for their IT intensiveness, education ranked lowest (below coal mining). Education industry that bears the responsibility to prepare children for the world of tomorrow, itself is not ready to embrace the digital revolution with an open mind.

Indeed there are some real risks attached with children using social media and it can’t be taken lightly. But there are also dangers in crossing a road. Do we tell our kids not to cross the road? No, we don’t! We hold their hand and tell them how to do it.

So irrespective of whether or not you as an institution are ready to embrace the new digital ways of teaching, the revolution is already happening. If educators are left behind on social media, they will also fail in the simple role of being cultivators of curiosity.

counteract the New WWW's potentially harmful impact on youth, educators must use technology to create learning experiences that are real, rich, and relevant.

Next will come 4G, in which data rates are expected to be 100 times faster than those in this first 3G wave. As the delivery platform of broadband content and functionality shifts from computer to personal device, we will be surrounded by a multimedia aura that accompanies us wherever we go

The plan is that you'll use your phone to spend money everywhere, all the time.

five aspects of schooling where teachers can make a positive difference to student engagement. They are Competence, Creativity, Community, Context, and Challenge.

A central premise of Tuned Out is that if something is important to student engagement, it is equally important to teacher engagement. Therefore, some of the suggested actions are for students, some are for teachers, and some are for use by facilitators of adult learning.

The trickiest of the cracks to get our heads around is the “connected divide,” separating those who are proficient in collaborative, creative and connected social networks and those who are not. It is growing exponentially wider on a daily basis.

Still, I have to admit that e-books are better than paper books in some situations. Here are five reasons I’ve switched to e-books, some of the time:

Ideally this would free teachers for more human and emotionally complex interactions, provided strategic adjustments are made.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Honda, Amazon, and well just about every other forward thinking company on earth are scrambling to adjust for a mobile culture that is cloud-based and social. This should affect everything in education, from how learning models and curriculum are designed, to how students interact with one another and their local communities.

Universities are decaying. At least in their current form.

Adults are as addicted—if not more addicted—to technology as teenagers.  

adults’ smartphone addiction telepressure: “the combination of a strong urge to be responsive to people at work through message-based [information and communications technologies and] a preoccupation with quick response times.”

It’s worth considering: When we criticize teens who are glued to their screens, are we offering wise advice? Or are we projecting our own mixed feelings onto them?

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

Our classrooms still look so much like they did when we (the readers of this blog post) were in school; maybe even when our parents were in school. The children we are preparing to enter the world are not entering at a 1985 ideal–they are entering at 2025. What are we doing with our content that is preparing them for the world they live in (or the world they will graduate into?)?

What are the fundamental, basic, non-negotiable principles upon which to base technology in schools? To name a few possibilities:

What are ways that you have had the conversation about technology in your school? And what definition of technology are you using?

I like "Deeper Learning" as a way to convey both the acquisition of knowledge and the transference/application of knowledge along with developing skills employers find valuable -- collaboration, communications and critical thinking.

Today's educators need to be connected -- that means they need to embrace social media along with utilizing online resources -- designing ways to integrate smart phones and iPads, along with laptops.

...the choices we make about how to use time in school are often the enemy of quality or value. Our patterns in leading classrooms are so ingrained that we do not even realize when we are making poor choices."

On digital dualism (or why, in 2013, are people still fear mongering the Internet?)

Push notifications are a way for an app to send information to your iPad or iPhone even when you aren’t using the app.

You’ll generally select “Don’t Allow” when asked if an app can send you notifications