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Back to work... What are the 3 most important messages in Educational Technology Today?

After a month in sandles, I returned to work today. (My last day in the office was July 8th, and today is August 8th.)

Luckily, I'm starting what amounts to the new year with a two day retreat with the management staff of the educational technology department in which I work at the Orange County Department of Education.

One question that came up today, at least as I interpreted it, was, "What are the three most important messages in educational technology today?"

In brief, I think my answer is this...

1. Students and teachers can and should be creating and sharing content using the read/write web (blogs, FURL, Flickr, RSS, podcasts, etc), particularly if they are interested in developing 21st Century Skills. (Most of this is free or inexpensive, too.)

2. Video and Computer games can serve as engaging, motivating, and powerful learning tools and learning environments, particularly for developing 21st Century Skills.

3. Schools should be using (and supporting) Open Source Software, particularly if they are interested in saving money, having control over their information technologies, and generally making the world a better place to live... oh, and developing 21st century skills!

Clearly I need to explore and articulate each of these messages more clearly, and I hope to do that here at Educational Technology and Life. Perhaps some of these ideas will be fleshed out as part of the OCDE EdTech message for the year, too.

Tomorrow I am facilitating a session in which we will discuss short and long term goals, and I am very much looking forward to this... and to reflecting on it in writing afterwards... at least as much as is appropriate.

I think I also have some draft doctoral work to post here... on educational technologies (particularly video games) as constructivist learning environments.

Thanks for reading.

-Mark