Blogs on Technology Integration

When we visited YES Prep North Central in Houston last spring, students in the junior class were already talking about their Senior Signing Day. On that day, amidst much fanfare, they would become the first in their families to enroll in college.

Editor's note: Gail Desler is our guest blogger today. She is a technology integration specialist for the Elk Grove School District near Sacramento, CA, and is passionate about the use of tech tools to facilitate new means of expression, collaboration and connection.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat. ~Robert Frost

The only problem?
with Haiku is that you just
?get started and then ?~Roger McGough

It has become an article of faith in the Washington thinktankocracy that teachers are the most important factor in their students' success. That's not an entirely bad thing. What professional doesn't want to be thought important?

But think-tank dwellers often draw the wrong conclusions from this claim. Most of their talk about teachers focuses on how to fire the bad ones, hire the good ones, and pay the really good ones. Too few people spare a thought for the environment and support teachers need to succeed.

I usually join the 5 p.m. MST #edchat on Twitter, but this past Tuesday (January 19), my colleague @boundstaffpress (Justin Miller) mentioned that I should tune in to the early version of #edchat.

The topic, laptops in the classroom, was one I follow carefully, because I run a science classroom with MacBooks for each student. So I multitasked while teaching and joined some of the #edchat discussion of whether 1:1 laptop programs are the future of education and exactly how such programs are changing education.