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12 Reasons to Get Your School District Tweeting This Summer

the district shelved the idea when it became apparent that students preferred using their personal mobile devices and that the cost of buying and ­refreshing ­notebooks every three to four years would be ­prohibitive

surveyed the 155 eighth-graders ­participating in the pilot, they learned something ­interesting: Although students loved the idea of having their own computer to do their homework, 52 percent of them were using their personal computers rather than those issued by the school

IT department beefed up the wireless network in its two middle schools and the high school and standardized on a set of cloud-based applications

School district employees should "exercise care and good judgement" by adhering to the following guidelines in the policy. School staff members:

The ability to take ownership of one's own learning and to pursue problems and solutions of one's own making are essential components of the 21st century skill set.

We’re going from districts fearing it and blocking it off to welcoming it and making it a major part of their technology plan. We’ll be surprised if a significant portion of districts aren’t using mobile learning inside and outside of schools soon.”

Each educator, each class, each school will have to find the best way to integrate mobile devices based on its student population. The opportunity of using mobile devices and all of its utilities allows educators to reconsider: What do we want students to know, and how do we help them? And what additional benefit does using a mobile device bring to the equation? This gets to the heart of the mobile learning issue: beyond fact-finding and game-playing – even if it’s educational — how can mobile devices add relevance and value to how kids learn?

personalized learning – students owning what they learn.

The 2013 results represent more than 400,000 surveys from 9,000 schools and 2,700 districts across the country. Respondents included 325,279 students, 32,151 teachers and librarians, 39,986 parents, 4,530 district administrators and, new to this year’s survey, 1,346 community members.

89 percent of high schools students have access to Internet-connected smart phones, while 50 percent of students in grades 3 through 5 have access to the same type of devices

students are designing “best-fit” solutions for their very specific needs.

computational thinking means breaking complex challenges into smaller questions that can be solved with a computer’s number crunching, data compiling and sorting capabilities.

as 21st century school leaders, need to become leaders of digital disruption to fundamentally change how we do school.

Understand that your district has BYOD in place. All schools do. It’s whether you choose to embrace the learning tool that makes the difference. Encourage the device. Don’t outlaw the learning tool for students or staff.

As I think about how big schools and districts can be, we have to less “automation” and more “personalization”.  Technology can either dehumanize or humanize; it depends how we use it.  The “social” is really the most important part of “social media” and we need to take advantage to not only share what we are learning, but to build connections in new ways.