According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the average adult texter sends and receives 10 messages per day, but a minority (4%) now sends more than 200 messages every day.

About 50% of all adults who use text messaging send between 1 and 10 messages, 25% send between 11 and 50 messages a day, 10% send between 50 and 200 messages. How does this compare to teenagers? According to an earlier Pew report, a smaller percentage of teenagers uses text messages (54%) than adults, but those that do use it tend to use it far more often than adults. About half of all teens in the U.S. send 50 or more text messages a day and one in three sends more than 100 messages a day.

to be successful in the 21st century you’re going to have to be a learner, you’re going to have to learn how to learn, and go after things on your own. You’re going to have to be independent, curious, passionate learners, who don’t just sit back and wait for someone to tell them what they’re supposed to know, but who go out and try to figure things out for yourself. Who pursue your interests, your goals, your passions with intensity, and who actively participate in everything you do. Who go out and find other learners who are passionate about what you are passionate about and learn from them – and alongside them.

We are starting to see examples of post-publication peer review and see it radically out-perform traditional pre-publication peer review

students already "want to know things." It is school that marginalizes the natural curiosity our kids enter school with. I watch my own children at home pursue learning (not related to required school work) with pure delight and tenacity. They try and try and try never feeling that their failures are wasted time or a judgment on their value as human beings. Instead, their curiosity piqued, they dive right in and learn.

School is not a place for curiosity, not a place for diving right in. It is a place were everything is prescribed, learning defined, and judgment made. The goal of school is like tracing - if the student can render an exact replica of the original they pass, they are lauded, they become the valedictorian . . . what they can't do is create, innovate, and as Ms Michlewitz accurately points out, can't formulate an independent thought or engineer a persuasive argument. They have been taught not to do that . . . much to this country's detriment.

a well-crafted website with a thoughtful teacher acting as a curator to the links can produce a body of knowledge superior to textbooks.

this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. . . . it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

the top 10 Web sites accounted for 31 percent of US pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75 percent in 2010

I don't think you can have a free country in which public officials are able to criminally prosecute people who film what they are doing," David Rocah, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland who is representing Graber, said. . . .

The encounter happened on a public street and, according to Rocah, police officers - public officials tasked with protecting the public interest - should not be able to hide behind such rules to avoid scrutiny.

"The value of documenting what is happening cannot be over-stated," he said.

Training of at least nine to 16 hours on the use of computers for instruction, reading instruction, and student discipline all declined notably, while training of up to eight hours in those areas shot up. That could be a sign that teachers are back in the infamous and much-maligned one-shot workshops. (Time spent on P.D. in teachers' own content area improved slightly over this time period.)

That finding is particularly discouraging given two other studies on professional development. One analysis of nine rigorous scientific studies, released in 2007, found that professional development with fewer than 14 hours of training had no statistically significant effect on student achievement, in comparison to those with at least 30 hours.

And this study's first report found that teachers in high-performing countries generally spend less time on instruction and much more time each week meeting, planning, and constructing lessons with other teachers.

by the time you get to be senior, the decisions that matter the most are the ones that would be best made made by people who are junior

Read Seth's whole post to see why. See also http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/03/iowa-invest-in-leadership.html

it’s increasingly clear that one day, the Internet, not the outrageous cellphone companies, will connect our calls

An honest debate needs to start with the numbers. The tax cut packages of 2001 and 2003 — heavily skewed to high earners — cut taxes by $1.65 trillion. In 2001, supporters argued that with the budget in surplus, the cuts were affordable. In 2003, they argued that the cuts would spur investment and growth and pay for themselves.

It has not turned out that way. Since 2002, the federal budget has been chronically short of revenue. According to calculations by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if the tax cuts of the Bush years had never been enacted, publicly held debt at the end of 2009 would have been about $5.2 trillion, or 37 percent of gross domestic product. Instead, it was $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of G.D.P. (it now stands at 60 percent).

The center estimates that if tax cuts and other current policies continue, debt would equal 90 percent of G.D.P. by 2020 — with 20 percent of that debt attributable to forgone revenue from extending the tax cuts. The truth is, the Bush tax cuts were not affordable when they were passed and they are not affordable now.

A bunch of things I think teacher librarians should unlearn:

1. That the little things really matter to those we serve and teach.  (For instance, whether or not we decide to shelve Mc and Mac together.)
2. That Boolean logic is the best search strategy since sliced bread.
3. That Wikipedia is bad or less-than-good in all contexts.
4. That databases are the only online sources with value.
5. That having a web presence, no–that having a really good and really useful web presence, is optional.
6. That someone else is exclusively or ultimately responsible for learning relating to information and communication and search technologies.
7. That the price initially quoted is the price you have to pay. (Thanks, Mom!)
8. That issues relating to Fair Use are generally going to be answered with the word no.
9. That no really means no when it comes to issues relating to access to the information and communication tools of today and intellectual freedom.
10. That libraries should be quiet.
11. That libraries should be neat.
12. That a library’s effectiveness and impact should be measured by the number of books it circulates.
13. That your stakeholders automatically will know what you contribute to your school’s culture.
14. That a library is merely a place to get stuff.
15. That your collection should be just-in-case rather than just-in-time.
16. That someone else is responsible for your professional development.
17. That ubiquity won’t change your practice profoundly.
18. That your library is bounded by four walls.
19. That your library is open from 8 AM to 3 PM.

Ooh... I like this list too! (see preceding post for another one)

10 things I think teachers should unlearn…

1. Teachers know all the answers.

2. Teachers have to be in control of the class.

3. Teachers are responsible for the learning.

4.  Students are obliged to respect teachers.

5.  Learning can be measured by a letter or a number.

6.  Teachers should plan activities and then assessments.

7. Learners need to sit quietly and listen.

8. Technology integration is optional.

9.  Worksheets support learning.

10.  Homework is an essential part of learning.

This comment is in direct response to the findings of studies that somehow manage to find a correlation between the results on standardized testing and a students' use of digital technologies.

Imagine a nation of horse riders with a clearly defined set of riding capabilities. In one short decade the motor car is invented and within that same decade many children become highly competent drivers extending the boundaries of their travel as well as developing highly new leisure pursuits (like stock car racing and hot rodding) At the end of the decade government ministers want to assess the true impact of automobiles on the nation's capability. They do it by putting everyone back on the horses and checking their dressage, jumping and trotting as before. (Heppell, 1994: 154)

Heppell, S. (1994). Multimedia and learning: Normal children, normal lives and real change. In J. Underwood (Ed.) Computer-based learning: Potential into practice, London: David Fulton. (pp. 152-161)

Teaching is a noble call that suffers when we practice in isolation and flourishes when we work together, and at no time in history have we had the tools we do today that allow us to work together for the good of our children. When we take the time to learn and embrace these tools, we grow as professionals

if you were starting a top university today, what would it look like? You would start by gathering the very best minds from around the world, from every discipline. Since we're living in an age of abundant, not scarce, information, you'd curate the lectures carefully, with a focus on the new and original, rather than offer a course on every possible topic. You'd create a sustainable economic model by focusing on technological rather than physical infrastructure, and by getting people of means to pay for a specialized experience. You'd also construct a robust network so people could access resources whenever and from wherever they like, and you'd give them the tools to collaborate beyond the lecture hall. Why not fulfill the university's millennium-old mission by sharing ideas as freely and as widely as possible?

If you did all that, well, you'd have TED.

for creators and for viewers, younger ones in particular, there's just content. Younger viewers aren't brand loyal to a network and their overthought lineups. Why should they be? They're creating their own lineups

Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system.

The thing is--now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you.

The creativity of the digital world is vastly different from the analog environment. There, creative is typically a static commercial art piece (or a "portfolio" of these). Creativity represented by great copy, an idea that makes a twist on a popular culture or "captures the zeitgeist," or as a piece-of-art logo and print ad, may indeed belong to the same era as those media that defined it.

In the digital world, that approach doesn't cut it. The best creative is the creation of relationships, connections and interactions. It connects tools with behaviors, locations, and objects. It creates networks or systems. To be creative there, you need to be strategic: you need to figure out who connects to whom, when and why and to what result. Simply, you need to plan for a chain reaction. These networks then give way to a collective creativity that becomes visible to all to use it, build upon it, change it, and add to it.

Ooohh... I like this!

Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere, said Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.”

if we haven't defined the teachers' knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed to successfully support a different technology-enriched learning environment, how can we provide a preservice teaching program to address these needs?

A Teacher Education program needs to identify what skills and tools need to be mastered to effectively work in a 1-to-1 learning environment and then they need to teach/use those methods in the classes they teach.  It's as simple as that.