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While we all need to be mindful of our dependence on technology, and on some of the negative impacts it can have on brain development when used improperly or in excess, the value of technology still exists in any mindful classroom environment. The key is to find a balance between using technology to enhance learning and providing students with the inner tools needed to calm their minds in a very fast pace world.

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.

“What do you see as the big ‘game changer’ in education?”

The real game changer isn’t something external; it is internal.  It is the way we think and grow.  It is moving from that “fixed” mindset about teaching and learning, and moving to the “growth” mindset.

 Change is the one constant that we will always have in our world and if we do not grow and learn to embrace it, then we will become irrelevant.

Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,”

Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.

I asked that they support risk taking by giving their people to opportunity to fail “early and often”

On their corporate web site, Google shares the following “ten things that Google has found to be true”:

“focus on the student and all else will follow” often serves me (and the participants in my workshops) well.

what we consider to be technology, is totally dependent on when it was introduced into our lives.

Rarely do we refer to it or even think about the car as technology, because it has always been with us.

Educators should not be so arrogant as to think they have the ability to decide whether or not kids can use these tools for learning. The kids do it with, or without adult permission. Any educator has the right to choose to live in a cave, however, they do not have the right to drag their students in there with them.

Our theory predicts that people fit into one of four groups, based on their typical use of the two brain systems. Depending on the degree to which a person uses the top and bottom systems in optional ways, he or she will operate in one of four cognitive modes: Mover, Perceiver, Stimulator and Adaptor.

How do we know that formative assessment isn’t just a passing fad?” The answer is simple. A focus on formative assessment requires teachers to relate two central issues in teaching – ‘What did I do as a teacher?’ and ‘What did my students learn?’ As long as teachers are focusing on the relationship between those two central issues, they will continue to improve their practice for as long as they stay in the job.

Different people define formative assessment in different ways

A great way to start building your PLN is to search for hashtags of Twitter chats that might be of interest to you

How My School Is Transitioning to Digital Textbooks: Organizing (Step 1 of 5)

This fall, Burlington High School will transition to a 1:1 school exclusively with the iPad 2. One of the goals of this initiative is to slowly transition curriculum and textbooks to ePub format. ePub file format allows anyone to create a file that is readable on an iOS device or Kindle like a book

Less discussed is how to mix online tools with in-person college classrooms. And some technology proponents say faculty need to do this effectively on a large scale to prepare students for life beyond college - and to make sure college stays relevant to a generation that has spent most of their lives on digital devices.

"I don't know if we can continue to pretend that we operate in analog environments and still prepare students for the digital world."

Net Smart is a book for an era where we’ve moved past just creating online identities and communities, but still have to educate ourselves on how to operate in day-to-day life. Rheingold said he believes a better understanding and deeper use of things like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are “essential survival skills” that will last beyond today or the lifespan of those individual companies.

Rheingold sees as important: attention, participation, collaboration, “crap detection,” and network smarts.

Social media is now being embraced by even the hardiest traditionalist as perhaps the best way to get messages to the masses and individuals. First seen as somewhat of a fad, Facebook is now the most used search engine on the web and even figures like Barack Obama and The Queen have a page.

Bullying is a worry for any student and indeed their parents but research has shown that pupils are far more likely to be bullied on the school bus than they are on any social media site.