There’s a part of me that feels as if the discussion I raised the other day about how using technology in way that simply adds up to “digitalizing worksheets” devolved to a place where I feel I wasn’t quite paying heed to the idea that I really do recognize the potential — if not obvious — merits of technology. I have seen Smartboards, airliners, wikis, webquests, nings and the such used in a manner that absolutely legitimizes the credibility of the argument for 21rst century skills in the classroom… and I am a fan.

I’m sold!

However, everything I’ve seen that I greatly admire has a foundation in real human thought and deep student thinking.

Technology allows students to probe deeper and wider with more expediency and more efficiency (to name but a few of the benefits). Wielded properly, the case for utilizing 21rst century technology tools is virtually inarguable. The stuff rocks.

However… well, the however category might be the biggest technology hurdle out there — and the one that so few are addressing by name. Bigger than the expenditure, the PD needed, the retrofitting of all our current institutions and the investment we are going to need to make on a zillion other fronts is the “However category”.

The “However” category relates to fundamentally asking ourselves, “What is the goal of classroom education?” If technology is not meta-cognitively implemented with an eye on reflectively asking ourselves “what is the learning goal that this tool better empowers me to achieve” then we will quickly find ourselves losing the forest for the trees.

After all, if we do not ask the right questions there is a very low likelihood that we are going to stumble into the right answers.

I know the past few years of NCLB has seen an almost manic mandate to have teachers — especially new teachers — put the day’s “academic objective on the board at the front of the room”. (As if learning is a widget to be easily stamped; today we will be persuasive argument writers, tomorrow precise gerund users, Thursday will see us read Langston Hughes for subtext and Friday will see us master split infinitives. Oh, the buffoonery.)

However, with technology, having a clear, well thought-out student learning objective really is the compass by which one can navigate the use of technology. Now, I don’t want to double dip and plagiarize from myself (can one even be guilty of this?) because I talk address this issue in depth in my Scholastic book Teaching Teens and Reaping Results in Wi-Fi, Hip-Hop, Where Has All the Sanity Gone World, yet, the fact is, when you bring project-based learning into the classroom, you need to know what intellectual goal you are pursuing before you even begin — and you better tenaciously pursue that clear and focused aim because all the bells and whistles available in tech today are like a Siren Temptress of the Sea which can easily lead a teachers onto the calamitous rocks of classroom lesson implosion.

Tech needs a litmus test to justify its incorporation into a classroom. Know your objective and then, think like Einstein who often said, “Simplify, simplify simplify.”

If the tech shoe doesn’t fit, why force it?

A part of my teaching life is paralyzed by feelings of perpetual professional inadequacy. And I feel like I am not alone.

I mean I finally get a grip on how to effectively teach theme and then I recognize the value that incorporating a classroom wiki could have. So I learn how to add this tool to my growing digital teaching arsenal but realize that there are some really high qualities insights to be gained by doing a bit more reading on using inquiry in the classroom. So I start to dive into inquiry theory when the idea of crafting a variance on student portfolios rears its head. Of course, there’s finding new ways to make Langston Hughes more accessible, figuring out if there is a better way to manage the paperwork, taking on a few more school duties so that I am really a part of a team and not just an island among other islands in this thing we called a “unified school district” even though it seems as though we are really quite separate and distinct from one another in so many various ways…

and on and on and on.

I mean, I am never at a place of just feeling comfortable with my current repertoire or abilities. There is always more to learn how to do unless I want to bury my head in the sand about the idea of the need for me to learn more in order for me to do a better job with kids.

But there is so much to learn — and so much that I am teaching once I learn it — that not even summer really provides me a sense of respite. It’s like people have this image of educator as summertime loafers who simply put school in a box,close the lid then fish, nap and grill on the bbq until back-to-school season rolls around.

Yet none of the teachers I admire (and there are scores of them) really approach their jobs — or their summers — this way. Sure, they relax over summer, take a trip and chill or whatever, but do they forget their classrooms? School? The plight of contemporary American education?

Or, do they already show a ton of concern for kids they have not yet even yet met (think about that, we deeply care for people we have not even yet met) and conjure up ways to better reach and teach them even if it is the middle of July and there’s not a school bell set to ring for well over a fortnight? (BTW, I always wanted to use the word fortnight in my writing. Check that off the list of things to do before I die.)

So, how do I get over the hump of feeling as if I still need to learn so much more? Is to be a teacher really to be a perpetual student? Does one ever ascend to the level of “master” and if so, does mastery mean you need to work less hard, as hard, or more hard in order to to learn the mysterious ways of the secret ninja teacher warrior?