Grateful for The Promise...

Babe when I’m with you it, makes me wanna be a better man,
Every day and night it’s true, you make me wanna be a better man,
Hangin out with you just makes me wanna be a better man and,
Laying up with you really makes me wanna be a better man

—Musiq Soulchild

If we were REALLY serious about educational technology, we would do things like… put a robust digital learning device into every student’s hands (or let them bring and use their own) instead of pretending that we live in a pencil, notebook paper, and ring binder world;
we’d teach students how to properly maintain and manage those computing devices rather than removing user privileges and locking down the ability to change any settings;
we’d show students how to edit their privacy settings and use groups in their social networks instead of banning those networks because they’re ‘dangerous’ and/or ‘frivolous’;
we’d teach students to understand and contribute to the online information commons rather than ‘just saying no’ to Wikipedia;
we’d understand the true risk of students encountering online predators and make policy accordingly instead of succumbing to scare tactics by the media, politicians, law enforcement, computer security vendors, and others;
we’d find out the exact percentage of our schools’ families that don’t have broadband Internet access at home rather than treating the amorphous ‘digital divide’ as a reason not to assign any homework that involves use of the Internet;
we’d 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;
we’d recognize the power and potential (and limitations) of online learning rather than blithely assuming that it can’t be as good as face-to-face instruction;
we’d tap into and utilize the technological interest and knowledge of students instead of pretending that they have nothing to contribute;
we’d integrate digital learning and teaching tools into subject-specific preservice methods courses rather than marginalizing instructional technology as a separate course;
we’d 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;
And so on…

—My opening remarks at the Iowa Education Summit | Dangerously Irrelevant | Big Think (via infoneer-pulse)

(via infoneer-pulse)

Looking In My Mirror
Took Me By Surprise
I Can’t Help But See You
Running Often Through My Mind

Helpless Like A Baby
Sensual Disguise
I Can’t Help But Love You
It’s Getting Better All The Time

I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

—Michael Jackson

If I can just make it up there,
and if I can walk through that city bright and fair;
there’d probably be a thousand things
I want to tell the Lord on that day.

I’ll just begin to cry,
You’ll wipe the tears from my eyes,
I’ll say thanks, You’ll ask why,
this will be my reply, You know…

Millions didn’t make it,
but I was one of the ones who did.

—Marvin Winans (The Winans)

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

—John Quincy Adams

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

—~ Ella Fitzgerald

It’s those quiet, quiet times
they are so precious to me, to me
that’s where you tell me all your secret things
and all you want me to be.

It’s those quiet time, quiettimes
alone together just, you and me
that’s when I tell you that I love you,
and you remind me that you love me too,

Together there ain’t nothing we can’t do,
and they can’t take them away from me no, no
oh they can’t take them away from me.

—Andrae Crouch