Amish approach to technology

This NPR story about the Amish and technological advances aired a while ago, but it keeps coming back to me again and again when I talk to people about technology and how it impacts our culture. So the Amish aren't necessarily anti-tech, but they think long and hard about how technology might impact the community and the culture? What a concept. Maybe we should rethink our slavish approach to tech changes.

Building a 21st Century library

I'm currently taking a class with school library master David Loertscher, which is turning out to be one of those uncomfortable yet valuable "learning what you don't know" experiences.

Loertscher, a proponent of expanding the role of the school library on campus and of using technology to teach, constantly reminds us of how plugged-in we need to be to teach this generation of students. The class is a real reminder of how much we're not doing to use technology on our campuses.

We're still here, but where are our kids?

Through Loertscher, I found a link to the "Big Think" blog, and a list by Scott McLeod of what we'd need to be doing if we were all serious about technology. Here's a taste of McLeod's list:

• "treat seriously and own personally the task of becoming proficient with the digital tools that are transforming everything instead of nonchalantly chuckling about how little we as educators know about computers;... 
• better educate and train school administrators rather than continuing to turn out new leaders that know virtually nothing about creating facilitating and/or sustaining 21st century learning environments;"