Darren,
As one of the ‘frontish-row’ types at your keynote at B.Y.T.E., I felt the need to leave a comment here.

Although your keynote was fantastic, as I expected it would be, I found that the underlying message most inspirational that should be re-visited as often as possible by anyone either fortunate enough to see the keynote in person or watch it in an archived state. Your message was one that technology needs not be the focus of instruction, but rather that humanity, compassion, social responsibility, and of course interdependence should be front and centre within the student-teacher relationship. You demonstrated many times during the short 45 minutes of your keynote that it is far more important to pay attention to the pedagogy and the personal educational relationships than it ever has been before. You said ‘it behooves us’ to think critically about the affective stuff with our students and how learners can take responsibility for their experiences.

Thank you for the effort you put into the presentation. I’ve said it before, but Manitoba is lucky to be a province where you wear a government hat.

i completely agree with that "your message was one that technology needs not be the focus of instruction, but rather that humanity, compassion, social responsibility, and of course interdependence should be front and centre within the student-teacher relationship."

Very well said. I also agree with your thought as well.

Just stumbled over this lecture of yours - truly inspiring!

Thank you all for the kind words.

I've noticed a common thread in all the research and generally anything written about what good teaching with technology looks like. Every summary of the things a "good teacher" does includes very few comments about technology per se and always includes something to the effect that good teachers care; they take care of both their relationship with their students and the relationships between the students in their classes.

I just posted to my posterous a summary of six characteristics that effective math teachers with Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK) have. Four of the six have little to nothing to do with technology and the last item specifically speaks to how good teachers are caring teachers.

Hi Darren,
I'm planning to watch this video yet one of these days before school ends. But I wanted to get your attention on my foray into communicating Digital Ethics to our students. I've put together a couple pages on my blog on Churchill's web site, and I'll be doing "Digital Ethics" mini-workshops will all my blogging classes next year. Our goal is to possibly get all students in our school to participate in some sort of Digital Ethics workshop.

I share this as a comment so that you and perhaps others who look at your blog can suggest any changes/additions/deletions or give any other feedback.

CHS Digital Ethics Workshop

Thanks!

Barrette

An interesting address. I would agree that especially with the dawn of the 21stcentury a futurism styled fascination with education and the way in which people learn was viewed as an inevitability. In some ways, such a statement is plausible, however as your address makes clear, technology and devices that become innovative tools to supplement education are just that, supplemental tools. Attempting to replace the empathetic, human element of learning which is embodied in teachers with a more mechanistic process of heavy dependence on technology does not always reap positive results, in fact it can lead to disastrous consequences.