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How Is Technology Affecting Teaching and Learning?

When was the last time you wrote an essay? When was the last time you read one other than for grading?

We need to reframe our conversation about writing from one based on polarities of analog versus digital to one about purpose, passion and relevance.

Social media: The haiku of digital writing

One-to-one professional development often begins with examining teaching methodology and exploring how this can be changed in order to begin to include the use of the technology to create a profounder, more engaging, more creative learning experience. This usually includes some focus on new skills around creative and critical thinking, connecting ideas, and communicating and collaborating with a variety of people, ranging from local students to experts from around the world.

It can be difficult to shift your role when all around you people are expecting and even evaluating you based on the old definition of what a teacher should be and do

change needs to be managed not just within the school walls, but within the school community and maybe the community at large.

they're not "designing and sharing information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes." Nor are they "building relationships with others to solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally." And as far as "managing, analyzing and synthesizing multiple streams of information?"

National Council of Teachers of English feels a "literate person" should be able to do right now

If we don't talk about how learning is changing first, the schools we create will continue to be places of "tinkering on the edges" instead of truly changed spaces.

Wunderlist makes it downright simple to organize your daily life.

Capture sights, sounds, tastes, and anything else. Keep notes from your classes all in one place.

No matter how complex your school schedule is inClass will help you keep track of all your courses and even alert you before class so that you are never late again.

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.

According to Livingstone and Blum-Ross ‘screen time’ “is an obsolete concept. As digital media become integrated into all aspects of daily life, it is more important to consider the context and content of digital media use, and the connections children and young people (and parents) are making, or not, than to consider arbitrary rules about time.”

digital devices are increasingly viewed as a means to bring students together in collaboration, rather than separate them further.

In the late 1990s, the Singapore Ministry of Education unveiled its master plan for technology. The first phase was spent building up infrastructure and getting computers into schools. In the 2000s, in phases two and three, the ministry focused on training teachers in how to use gadgets and identifying schools to experiment with new innovations.

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

nstead of banning the devices that we know our students love, we should figure out how to use them to engage our students. Rather than banning them from the classroom, we should be showing students how to use them appropriately.

Teaching students how to use those tools properly and finding a balance between technology and other hands-on methods of learning is what really makes sense