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The answer is that we are not only living in the most peaceful time in history, but also the best reported time in history.

"When you talk about the choice between Android and iOS, that's a big decision. But the bigger decision is, 'Are we going to change our whole attitude to how we're delivering the lessons to the students?'"

"If you have a really slow wireless connection, and you're going to have to solely rely on apps, the amount of educational apps available for the iPad far outnumber what's available for Android and the quality of them," Starr said. But if you have a fast connection and want to use online content at no cost, remember that the majority of that content is based on Flash

Time is all about decisions. When you claim to not have enough time to learn new things and provide engaging instruction to your students, that’s a conscious decision.

But that blurry part…that’s the tough part. That’s where decisions have to be made. Where students at the age of 13 need to start making decisions that we never had to make. We never had a professional side at 13….we didn’t need one. But if you are going to have a social side on the Internet then you better also start building your professional side.

the flip’s gradual disappearance from our learning space hasn’t been a conscious decision: it’s simply a casualty of  our progression from a teacher-centred classroom to a student-centred one.

we “find” evidence to support the decision we have already made anyway, and apply less rigorous judgment when our preconceptions are apparently confirmed.

We’re working on shifting the focus from teaching to learning at my school. We try to ensure decisions are based on our learning principles, be they about teaching, classrooms, programs or personnel.

Risk Taking

This means teens literally cannot come to a decision as fast as an adult.

scans showed that the reward center of the teen brain became much more active in the company of their peers

Yet when journalists (and law enforcement, talking heads and politicians) imply that teenage suicides are directly caused by bullying, we reinforce a false narrative that has no scientific support.

he greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for impulse-control, judgement, decision-making, planning, organization and involved in other functions like emotion, occur in adolescence. This area of the brain (prefrontal cortex) does not reach full maturity until around age 25!

Still, talking to strangers is different from handing over a set of your house keys. We’re learning how to draw the line between those extremes, and it’s a line that each of us will draw in different ways. That we get to make these decisions for ourselves is a step forward; the valley is a much richer and more connected place than the old divide between privacy and celebrity worship was. But it is going to take some time to learn how to live there.

requires sophisticated searching and processing skills

many users have not been taught how to make appropriate decisions

we must teach everyone to become responsible digital citizens

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.