Tried and Tested. Is what we are doing tried and tested. Are the strategies you are using tried and tested. Can you fall back on years of experience to ensure that it is the right path. This phrase is one that I hear time and time again with teachers. They are waiting for the time when we can say, "yep, this is the path to go because X, Y and Z happened". Honestly, this phrase may never come and here is why.

Whether you live in a technology rich environment or try to seclude yourself from this world, it is impacting everything you do. Buying groceries at target, searching for items online, or using a fit bit all create digital trails of information in your name that can be tracked, measured, and to an extent guided. This may be scary to some, but it is here and it is real. The true impact that technology has on our lives is only at the bottom floor. There will be a day when everything around us has a chip in it, and all of those chips can talk with each other. They are talking about how you go about your life and how you interact with the things around you. They are talking about how they can make your life better and how they can influence you to make better choices. These ideas and directions are already in place by companies like Google and Apple. 

The growth trend of technology is exponential and we are just at the beginning. it culd be represented by a hockey stick that you lean against the wall. We are just now at the bottom of the hockey stick. As you continue to move upward, we will reach a day when the growth trend explodes upward. There will be a new breakthrough that will forever change what we do and how we do it. Think about the touch screen cell phone. This technology took a few years to grab hold, but today you no longer have the choice to have a button based phone. This growth is equivalent to you riding a downward traveling escalator. You can choose to hike upward, or you can stand still. By standing still, you are going to move away from the end result. The target of knowing how to use technology to boost student learning is forever moving and shifting upward. Without taking purposeful steps toward this goal, you are moving away from it and not standing still. 

The only constant in todays world is change. We should expect that if you learn how to do something, the process or the tool will change within the next 3 years. This mindset is one that many younger people already have. They are "good with technology" because they know that you can either embrace the change and know that it is a constant, or you can try to shut it out all together. Like I mentioned above, choosing to shut it out and ignore this, you are moving away from your target. It will take longer for you to get to your goal.