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Critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration can all happen in the absence of the digital element. It is when we recognize through our instructional preparations that a real need for these technology tools becomes necessary, instead of merely nice.

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.

what would happen if we didn’t focus so much on college, if we deemphasized grades, or if we assigned less homework, etc. Here are some of the answers Gleason got:

To be clear–learning can happen in the absence of technology. Integrated poorly, technology can subdue, distract, stifle, and obscure the kind of personal interactions between learner, content, peer, and performance that lead to learning results.

Most profound learning happens when a student understands how her brain works and she knows the factors that affect brain development.

The students have already changed. The learning trends of 2012 have changed, too. They’re now approaching the trends of 2020, and here we are today curious about what engages students and what their interests are and how they tend to use the tools they love. That’s reactive design

While education struggles to agree on what needs changing and how to make it happen—and why, it should be asked, should we have to agree?—things around us have all exploded, detonated by technology.