Alan November Says.....

· No Network manager should have the power to tell teachers what they can and cannot access from the Internet!

· Real work is not teaching teachers technology, but teaching teachers how children respond to technology.

· The next time you do a PD on technology, have students in the room, or the PD is not real world.

· I can show you how to use technology in 1 hr, but to teach you to give up control may take a career.

· School's current mission is to transfer knowledge, now it must become to shift control -teachers to students.

· The tools are free, so how do we get teachers to adopt it.

· Students keep making the same mistake on tests as homework because the brain records the mistake without instant feedback

· We should teach 3 skills: find information needed, collaborate globally, teach students to be self directed.

· Schools will not change until the pressure from the outside to change is greater than pressure inside to stay the same.

· Don't teach students specific skills, teach them to use tools and how to problem solve.

· The world is fundamentally going to change, and schools don't keep up.

· The first thing I would do is teach students to create content to help other students learn better.

· Research shows a student's voice has more impact on students in MS than a teacher's voice. Have them teach!

· If you are a history teacher, you live for the why questions.

· Use site:uk (or other country code) to get sites from countries you are studying or books you are reading.

· If we don't teach American kids empathy, they won't get the jobs we need them to get.

· With archive.org, if it was ever on the Internet, it is always on the Internet.

WOW! So much of this is so easy to do and understand, yet it is so hard for educators (as it is with the rest of the population) to break the habits of the past and to be visionary in thinking and teaching. Yet that is what each of us in Lutheran education is called to do. We are called to do the VERY BEST we can for all of our students. Simply using the same instructional models  and management principles year after year is not enough. We MUST engage students in new ways with the technological gifts with which we have been blessed to best prepare students for THEIR future.

When I go back to the classroom on Monday morning, I will re-commit myself to the hard work of making these things happen. The future of our children and our schools depends upon it.