The past few days I have been riding the “Schools must go high tech!” horse as if I am some kind of tech geek.

I am not. Yes, I own an iPad and I blog and I have a cool website for all of my books, free stuff, and so on, but really, I don’t view myself as cutting edge.

I view myself as just doing the bare minimum of what I need to do in order to keep pace so that I can continue to professionally evolve and remain critically responsive to the aims I hold for my career.

Matter of fact, I still don’t know how to work all the functions on my phone, my camera or even my laptop.

I’ve been using Microsoft Word for what, 20 years now? I still don’t really know how to do about a million things in that program.

Truly, the capacities of these machines boggle me. I just kind of know what I know and seek to stay comfy in that realm.

Essentially, I don’t prosper; I survive.

However, I am perpetually feeling forced to either evolve or be left behind. Trust me, a big part of me is WAY more conformable working at a whiteboard with novels using oration and paper and pen to navigate my school year. (Bubble tests and scantrons… forget it!)

Yet, I also know that literacy has become so diverse and there are so many genuinely legit projects to bring into my classroom which just rock the house and demonstrate aptitudes which allow me to meet my goals in so many ways that I believe in my heart that if I do not better embrace technology in the classroom I am doing a disservice to my students. (The degree of this slight is up for debate… but to simply not use any tech at all feels to me as if the kids are being short-changed – especially because the only real reason I would not bring some tech at some point into my classroom projects is my own inability to work in this realm. It’s never the students that inhibit me from bringing tech in the classroom… it’s me! My own inability prevents kids from using their abilities. That’s a thought worth taking note of for, does it not, ring true, for many, may teachers? Why are we so afraid to admit our shortcomings and also say, “Hey, I need help!”?)

Matter of fact, I think a driving force in me buying an iPad was a feeling of being left behind which is ironic because, when I look at public education on the whole, people must think I am at the far end of the technological competency curve.

That is scary because in many ways I am an outright oaf with tech tools!

It just goes to show how far behind our schools are. I guess the old saying is true: In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Tech has a definite place in the 2010 classroom. It’s not the end-all, be-all and it isn’t the panacean answer that people would want you to believe (probably because they are trying to sell you something when they say it)… but technology can help us evolve.

A lot.

And when you look at how much room for improvement there is in public education today, it’d be great to see the common core standards tethered to the idea of project-based learning as opposed to it being tethered to, what we all fear will be, standardized bubble tests.

No, I am not a tech geek. And I’d be laughed out of one of those tech conferences if ever I was forced to show how little I actually do know.

But I understand the idea that when we preach “you must be a lifelong learner” in our schools, the first person that must embody this idea is me, the classroom educator.

Yesterday I blogged about allowing my students to fiddle around with my new iPad. One additional insight I had as I watched them play around with the remarkable device was that, like it or not, seeing the ease with which all of them were able to navigate a tablet computer cemented for me the idea that giving our students tablets trumps outfitting them with printed books for many, many, many reasons.

In fact, to cite the reasons why it makes sense to convert to digital texts in the world of academics strikes me as an argument not even worth making. Remaining anchored to paper, however, is an argument I’d like to hear.

Because I am not sure how, on balance, the comparison is even close.

If money wasn’t the option – or rather, if you looked at the degree of actual savings we’d be able to incur should we measure everything based on a cycle of ten years ROI (return on investment) versus solely the first year’s expenditure of making the initial technological purchase – a tablet that has access to the web which is pre-loaded with class curriculums and software for productivity (i.e. MS Office or another version thereof) seems to be able to dominate the way we currently do things much like the way a high-end laptop computer dominates having twenty filing cabinets full of paper divided by tabs as a system for keeping track of all my work.

From speed to sharing, depth to complexity, multiple perspectives to the latest current thought on a subject matter, what can be done is beyond remarkable with tablets in a student’s hands… and what we can’t do, and what we are not doing, and how we are almost being short-sighted like Wall Street by focusing only on the next quarter instead of our long term growth (can you say year-to-year bubble tests?), well… I may be late to the party/bandwagon but I just got my iPad last Friday so cut me some slack.

The device has let me see the light. Theoretically, I had heard the arguments. But seeing my iPad in the hands of my students really re-shaped my thinking.

And no, printed books are not dead. That’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that we can do school better. (i.e. I am talking about replacing the notebooks, the physical books, the memos, the physical tests, and so on.) We have the tools to do it better.

And we have them now.

But are we willing to pay for it? Impossible, right?

I say we cancel all the bubble tests for the next 3 – 5 years and use all that money to make all our schools one-to-one laptops/tablets.

I am absolutely convinced public education in the United States of America would be immensely better served by this idea. And if we can’t convert all of them, let’s start with 50%.

Or 25%?

At some point, we are going to begin. After all, the only way to eat an elephant is to start with a first bite.

One day we will have made the leap. And we’ll be better institutions because of it. Let’s start now by using the money we are virtually peeing away with tests everyone agrees are inferior measurements of students aptitude and instead, go right for the goal of actually improving student achievement by providing them with cutting edge tools for the classroom.

After all that’s the “alleged” purpose of the tests anyway: to help us better educate our kids, right?

Better tools do that better than weak tests.

And the sound the rest of the world would hear would be that of America’s students roaring with excitement about the possibilities of what can happen inside a school house.

Our country must make the leap!

I brought my iPad to school yesterday and let my students play around with it (after I gave a small demo). I gotta admit, it was a bit nerve-wracking to let a bunch of kids play with my new tech toy. I mean if they end up breaking it (through goofing around, an accident, and so on — hey, they are kids) what am I gonna do… ask them to pay for it?

My students can’t afford their own iPads much less afford to replace their teacher’s iPad if there’s an accident.

And really, I knew that score when I passed it around and let them handle it anyway. But still, I did it.

And why? For a few reasons.

1) I want to let them see the future. It’s my opinion that one day all of our school desks will be made of material like this, where kids intellectually operate on desktops that are really touch screens that can do all sorts of amazing things. I literally told them that. “This,” I said. “Is the school desktop of the future.” Not a one of them doubted me either. And every last kid in the class thought the idea was wicked cool. Part of teaching in this day and age is showing glimpses of what is possible. (This, I believe.)

2) Allowing them to hold it, fiddle with it and so on communicates and adult-like trust in them. It’s like I imply that I believe in their ability to behave in a mature fashion and handle an expensive personal gadget in a responsible way and POOF! it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy… they handled the iPad in a mature and responsible fashion. These are the baby-steps of growing up… when grown-ups actually treat you like grown-ups instead of treating you like children. (i.e. walking the walk instead of merely talking the talk, as many teachers often do.)

3) Just turning pages in a book on the iPad is, what I’d consider, a real “literacy moment” because the experience is just so unique. I will never forget the the first time I did it. (It’s way different than a Kindle.) I want my students to experience that… and somewhat marvel.

Because indeed it is a Brave New World and the discussions we have had all year about things like the impact of technology on our lives, privacy in this day of openness, sexting, piracy, 21rst century skills, veracity of info online, the need to be able to navigate the tools of the next era and so on and so on… all of them are re-inforced by a moment such as this.

Nope, ETS and their bubble tests can’t measure this moment. Nope, when they tie bubble tests to my salary and try to demonize me for test scores through lower pay and public shame, I might not be able to prove the value of this lesson but for any real classroom teacher, days like this are days you know that your kids have learned something.

What? Well, it’s hard to exactly quantify. But does all learning have to be quantifiable?

Anyone who says it does is someone I am not sure I trust.

The iPad: already teaching me and my kids a whole host of things.

I just left the Apple Store and touched the iPad for the very first time. My take on it?