Quotes of the Day

There were two quotations that I heard on Friday at ACTEM that really resonated with me. The first was said by our keynote presentator, Tony Vincent. He reminded us all that, “Our students will have computers in their pockets for the rest of their lives. We need to teach with that in mind.” He challenged us to be innovative in our teaching, not to maintain the status quo. We should be giving our students a global audience with which to share their work, connecting them with other classes around the world, and using emerging technologies. Doing that, honestly, will be harder for us – the teachers – than for the students. In his previous post, Dean listed some social networking tools that can be powerful teaching tools as well.

That brings me to the second quotation that really stuck with me. “Teachers who say that they don’t have time to teach digital citizenship aren’t teaching the 21st century student.” Besides using Web 2.0 and social media tools with our students, we need to teach internet safety and valuable online survival skills. It’s not just teaching our students important life skills…it’s also federally mandated that schools teach this in order to be in compliance with eRate funding. I’m afraid that our district is lagging in this curriculum area and I have renewed interest in focusing on this. So prepare to see me at the Wed Wednesday on Edmodo in the near future!