Thanks to a small group of teachers that are using the technology our students have used at home for quite some time now, students are beginning to share their experiences and their creativity with school personnel- myself included.  Students have been using blogs to communicate, create pages about their favorite music group, post their poetry, and share their explorations in cyberspace.  I for one become excited when I think of the possibilities.  We may sit in a room with four walls but that doesn’t mean all the learning that is to take place has to be from the people in those four walls.  Why not partner with a class in Thailand or Japan?  The closest we came when I was a student was to be pen pals….writing a letter to someone in a foreign land, mailing it and waiting, and waiting, and hoping someone would write back just to get a letter that tells you their favorite color, their favorite food and their pet’s name.  Now we can talk about what they are reading in literature and do it in real time over Skype and converse for free.  We must catch up.  We need training, we need equipment and we need to have the belief that this type of learning is much more valuable to students than reading a textbook.  I am not insulting any teacher and saying that textbooks have no value.  I am asking to give it some thought.  By the time a textbook is written, published, marketed and purchased by a school district it is over a year old.  When we talk about the sciences or history, advances were made the day the book made it to print.  New countries were established and old countries no longer exist. 

Students are impatient when it comes to information.  It’s not their fault.  Video games are interactive and very motivating, anything they want to learn or read about they can find with the click of a mouse and a few seconds (maybe a little longer if they still have dial-up).  They are capable of taking in an enormous amount of information from thousands of sources.  Our job- show them how.  Show them the educational value as well as the social value.  Teach them how to determine if an internet source is credible or not.  Give them time and permission to produce evidence of their learning that is different than a multiple choice or essay question.   Throughout the district I am hearing more and more of this kind of thinking.  I am interested in what students think and if the change is welcome.  Of course, as an educational leader I need to ask the most important question….Is it making a difference in your academic achievement and relevance of the subject matter?