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Any one of these web tools that a freshman in high school learns today will most likely not exist or will be replaced by something better in 8-10 years when that freshman graduates from college. However, if teachers change their approach to focus on transferable technology skills (i.e. the NETS-S) it will make the integration of technology more meaningful and prepare our students with skills they can take with them in the future.

recent one-week study that compared the outcomes of two classes, a control class that received a lecture from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and an experimental section where students worked with graduate assistants to solve physics problems. Test scores for the experimental group (non-lecture) was nearly double that of the control section (41% to 74%).

As needs change over time, addressing them might mean switching devices (remaking the choice). As schools progress in their technology implementation, they may find that their needs have changed, and should not hesitate to change devices as their understanding of their students’ needs develops. This seasonal view of devices (rather than “device as school identity”) is essential to helping schools move forward, meet their current students’ needs, and keep the curriculum relevant and timely for the future. A focus on pedagogy and key technology skills will transfer from one device to another, making the shift easier; a focus on being a device expert, or mastering device specific mechanics, will not. Students will graduate into a world that will demand technological fluency, the ability to move and process information across various platforms and devices.

an ongoing study that explores the ways in which young people’s use of social-networking sites, blogging, online games, and other forms of digital media are shaping their “ethical minds” in that realm.

not to imply that stage 1 is “bad” and that learners should always be given free-reign with powerful technology. The age of graduated release of responsibility model (show me, help me, let me), as always, holds true here as well.

We need to be smart about ensuring we are preparing students to be well-Googled by the time they graduate high school.

Boasting a 98 percent college-matriculation rate among graduates, High Tech High warrants a closer look, and Whiteley's documentary devotes a full year to examining the project

"The only surviving skills that will save young kids are creative and innovative. As the current school system is now, for 12 of 16 years, you're not in an environment that brings that out of them."

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?)?

In some ways, digital literacy is a linchpin of the other competencies.