Darryl Ensminger

Significant aspects of culture are changing as a result. In 1950, almost all households subscribed to a daily newspaper,

A current Pew Foundation study reports that more than 80% of millennials sleep with a cell phone by the bed “poised to disgorge texts, phone calls, e-mails, songs, news, videos, games, and wake-up jingles.”

Texting has become the preferred channel of communication between teens and their friends.

these devices are helping to bridge the digital divide by providing Internet access to less privileged students. Students use smartphones and related handheld devices and tablets to coordinate schedules and face-to-face gatherings; share stories, images, and video; browse the Web; and participate in social networks.

Pew reports that most schools treat these devices as a disruptive force that educators must manage and exclude from the school and the classroom

predict that by the end of the next decade, secondary schools will offer up to half of all courses in virtual formats.

. Nearly 25% of millennials list technology use as the top factor that makes their generation unique, whereas this does not appear in the top five responses cited by the Baby Boomer Generation (

Differences in life priorities and patterns of social use are reflected in the way that one generation prepares the next for teaching roles. Although millennials use technology to develop social connections and interactions—for example, the majority have posted social profiles—this use of technology does not directly translate into effective instructional use. In contrast, the boomers and Gen-X instructors who staff teacher preparation programs have deep expertise in content and pedagogy but are less experienced in social uses of technology.

Effective virtual schools will capitalize on the always-connected social networks established by millennials.

This will require careful thought about the ways technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) intersect.

Millennials have direct experience with the first element of TPACK inherent in the context of social networks linked to the always-connected fabric of their daily lives. Teachers and teacher educators from prior generations—boomers and Gen-Xers—have a deep knowledge of pedagogy and content. Collaboration across generations can realize the full educational potential.

not “special projects

. Our observations suggest that these tools function very differently in the classroom than in the “real world.”

saw blogs as a generally more effective conversation tool for inspiring interest and communication.

using the blog principally as a private means of communication between the teacher and each student.

A Spanish teacher we spoke to asks her students to blog about an imaginary visit to a different country.

We found examples of blog tasks that had at least one of four pedagogical objectives:

• Eliciting prior knowledge
 • Generating interest
 • Supporting student debates
 • Providing students with feedback from their peers

A number of teachers used blog tasks to explore prior knowledge or generate interes

blog debates

blog allows them to participate even if they are too shy to speak in class. A blog also allows them to give more thoughtful and critical feedback, because they can take time to look up information or carefully craft a statement to be critical but not mean-spirited.

With Web 1.0 activities, such as student-created webpages, it was harder for random viewers to talk back to students, and teachers could more easily filter negative comments because they had to be sent through a webmaster. Web 2.0, in contrast, is essentially about user-generated content, and the nature of the tools promotes direct communication back and forth between users.

created a wiki to publicly publish “selected” works that the students approved

One example we saw was a science project in which groups of students each posted a wiki page on a different skin disease.

This leads us to the third, and certainly most important, factor we learned about: The social practices around Web 2.0 are paramount to making these tools part of a rich learning community, and educators must consciously control access to that community

It is important to remember that “always on” in a Web 2.0 environment does not mean you have to be connected to the classroom every minute. Instead, your students can be engaged with their peers and in learning off and on throughout the day

And, because it is all saved online, you can check in on the conversation whenever you need to—during your planning time, before school starts, or whenever you have a spare moment.

Web 2.0 tools should be a means to engage students in their work, not an end in themselves

That is almost exclusively what we now do with educational technology. We use it mostly to pass documents around, but now in electronic form, and the result is not very different from what we have always known.

Luddite administrators (and even Luddite technology administrators) lock down the machines, refusing to allow students to access email.

But there are many more old things children are doing in new ways -- innovations they have invented or adopted as their preferred method of behavior -- that have not yet made their way into our schools. These include buying school materials (clothes, supplies, and even homework)

How many of these new ways will ever be integrated into our instruction -- or even understood by educators?

For true technological advance to occur, the computers must be personal to each learner.

Schools (which really means the teachers and administrators) famously resist change.

These "digital natives" are born into digital technology. Conversely, their teachers (and all older adults) are "digital immigrants."

With very few exceptions, our schools have not been physically designed for computers.

consult the students. They are far ahead of their educators in terms of taking advantage of digital technology and using it to their advantage.

For the digital age, we need new curricula, new organization, new architecture, new teaching, new student assessments, new parental connections, new administration procedures,

Change is the order of the day in our kids' 21st-century lives. It ought to be the order of the day in their schools as well

"When will we have time for the curriculum," they will ask, "and for all the standardized testing being mandated?"

So, let's not just adopt technology into our schools. Let's adapt it, push it, pull it, iterate with it, experiment with it, test it, and redo it, until we reach the point where we and our kids truly feel we've done our very best. Then, let's push it and pull it some more. And let's do it quickly, so the 22nd century doesn't catch us by surprise with too much of our work undone.