As I sit and read Marc Prensky’s Teaching Digital Natives I am in absolute awe. I have done a lot of 21st century ED reading this summer but nothing has floored me the way that Prensky has. This book is written with such ease and exactness that it gives me hope that any educator that reads it will undoubtably begin to take the crucial steps to create a partnership in their classroom, not a dictatorship. I must tell you that I am only 30 pages in but from page one my only wish was that I could read faster and remember every single word!

Prensky argues that a partnership must be made in the classroom in order for students to excel in a globally connected, every changing world and if this does not occur we are not only doing our students a disservice, we are doing the world a disservice. It truly is that big of a deal. Prensky lays out the basics of what must be consistent in the partnering classroom for this to occur. He describes partnering as “letting students focus on the part of the learning process that they can do best, and letting teachers…

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Hello, my name is Beth Sanders and I am a second year social studies teacher at Tarrant High School in Birmingham, AL. I am beyond lucky to have 1:1 Macbooks and iPod Touches in my classroom and have become known throughout our school system as the “techie” who rarely sleeps.

If I only had one word to define myself, it would be passionate. I am passionate about education reform, social justice, 21^st century skills, and purposeful technology integration, among several other things. I live, eat and breathe all things education and I am in constant pursuit of embedding purposeful and passion driven learning tools into my classroom. I am an advocate for problem/project-based learning. I believe strongly in the power of technology to support students in becoming independent, aware, empathetic, problem-solvers who cannot only live in, but thrive in an ever-changing globally connected world.

I am an avid supporter of Schoology and can truly attest to its power in the classroom in supporting all types of learners in maximizing their learning experience. If you follow my twitter handle, you know how serious I am about this; I truly cannot imagine my classroom without Schoology. As a…

As a techie and proud member of the Net Generation, I feel the need to keep up with the times, and even encourage my friends, family, and colleagues to do the same.  I admit that I exhibit some of the qualities that we worry about in this younger generation.  For example, I can’t go an hour without checking my phone.  I’d prefer texting, IM, and email over talking on the phone.  And as my husband says, before I even roll out of bed in the morning I’ve checked email, Facebook, Twitter, and maybe even played a word on Words with Friends.

While I can’t imagine going back to life without all of these tools, I’m also careful not to jump on the latest bandwagon.   A colleague recently placed an article in my mailbox titled “Forget the Fads – The Old Way Works Best“.  It was published in Newsweek in 2002 and includes a quote by Theodore Sizer, Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.  He was asked if he could name a single reform in the past 15 years that has been successful.  To which he replied “I don’t think there is one.”…