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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:

NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.

Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities of the brain. Speed-reading programs have long claimed to do just that, but the verdict was rendered by Woody Allen after he read “War and Peace” in one sitting: “It was about Russia.” Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory studies but by the familiar sight of an S.U.V. undulating between lanes as the driver cuts deals on his cellphone.

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate.

As much as some people may yearn for the simpler times of the past, life will continue to move forward as the natural order of society requires.

If we do not take time to understand new information and how it interacts with what we do, we, as a profession, may go the way of typewriters, photographic film, super 8 film, 8 track cassettes, landline telephones, or block-ice refrigeration.

Staying up-to-date, relevant, on information in your own profession is a moral imperative. We can’t expect what we learned as college students to carry us through a 30 or 40-year career.

With the huge potential that Information and communication technology has to offer for teaching and learning also comes a matching potential for distraction, illicit and inappropriate activity, and poor judgement.

The teacher holds a cornerstone role in the development of understanding, the appreciation of culture and diversity, and the formation of the moral and ethical basis that, like the cornerstone of a building, provides a strong and stable foundation for life in both the real and virtual world they co-inhabit.

The most salient lessons are not learned by avoidance but by facing you action, its impact, and the consequences.

Because the most powerful technology in the classroom was, is and will remain...a classroom teacher. But not just any classroom teacher - it has to be a classroom teacher with a love of learning, an appreciation of the aesthetic, the esoteric, the ethical, and the moral - a teacher who understands Bloom and Gardner - who understands how different students learn at different stages of their lives.

Every generation since the time of Socrates and Plato, including our parents, has looked at the next generation - including us - and said, what’s wrong with those kids? There’s nothing wrong with these kids. They’re just different – neurologically different – that’s why they see the world differently – they engage with the world differently.