"Less about the grade, more about the learning."

From the beginning, I could tell that the "Power On Texas" was out to change the minds of even the most stubborn skeptics about implementing technology in the classroom. Video one began with a battlecry that all advocates of technology should add to their repertoire:

"Using technology is about connecting students to the world that they live in today and preparing them for the world they will work in tomorrow."

Truly, how can we as educators continue to gripe about how our students are disinterested, disengaged, and unmotivated in our classrooms if we insist to continue on with an ancient teaching model? Many classrooms today are indistinguishable from classrooms of the 1800s, while the world outside of the classroom's walls is unrecognizable for all the leaps and bounds we have made thanks to technology. It's time to at least meet our students halfway; to bust down a few walls between the classroom and the real world, and that is what technology can help us to achieve as educators.

The most common complaint amongst teachers when it comes to technology is that their schools simply cannot afford all of the shiny new tools that other schools have. I'll save everyone my usual point about how more and more government grants and donations from others are making it more likely for schools to gain technological tools, and point out another interesting fact made within one of our videos. In one school, they could not afford 1 to 1 computing. Instead, only four computers were allowed in each classroom. Within this limitation, however, teachers found an opportunity for their students to learn how to collaborate with one another. Students learned how to share their computers, and each student was assigned a role in a group: recorder, researcher, navigator, etc. As later videos pointed out, it is becoming more important than ever for our students to learn how to work together, and more and more research points to how students can learn substantially more if they are allowed to work together. Realistically, we will never be able to have an ideal situation in our classrooms, especially when it comes to technology. We will always have to endure limitations and make concessions in our classrooms, but if we can learn how to turn limitations into opportunities, we could seize more opportunities to help our students learn more than ever before.

Another common excuse among teachers when it comes to implementing new technology in their classrooms is that they simply do not have the time or resources necessary to learn how to effectively use new technological tools. "Power On Texas" did an excellent job of showing how implementing weekly workshops and assistance can be incredibly effective in helping teachers become more comfortable with technology. As one educator pointed out, "comfort must come before creativity." With these programs in place (i.e. Tech Tuesday), teachers were allowed to collaborate with one another, ask questions, and create lessons so that they were comfortable with technology, and from there their creativity flowed and made for incredible lessons. At the heart of excuses is usually fear. As an educator in one video stated, many teachers are not just afraid the technology won't work, but rather they are afraid of losing control in their classroom once they unleash their students in the world of technology. Schools need to make it clear to teachers that there is nothing to fear when it comes to using technology in their classrooms. Truly, it will take some time to adjust and find what works for them, but ultimately the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Finally, many teachers will cry for proof before they go about the business of reshaping their comfortable, useful lesson plans to integrate technology. For these doubters, the "Power On Texas" videos provided ample evidence that technology works if we know how to use it. With technology, teachers can address multiple intelligences on a daily basis. As one educator stated, "kids that didn't have any interest in paper and pencil tasks just fly with technology." With technology, students can get up and move, listen, watch, type, play, and interact without a teacher having to put on a dog-and-pony show at the front of the room. Through making public service announcements, students have to collaborate, rehearse, act, repeat, and edit, and through their videos they are teaching others a specific concept; and as we all know, teaching someone else is the best way to learn something. With more advanced technological tools such as DyKnow and Mimeo, students can more easily collaborate not just with each other, but also with the teacher in real time, whether they are in the same room or not. DyKnow also allows teachers to keep a closer eye on students without constantly standing over their shoulders.

If all this wasn't enough, these videos also contained dozens of testimonials from real teachers about how technology has helped their students and themselves. Since implementing technology and project-based learning, these teachers have noticed remarkable decreases in discipline problems, and significant increases in attendance, independence, engagement, and motivation in their students. They realize that there is no magic bullet that will solve all of these problems for all students. No matter what we do, there will be some resistant students, but these educators have seen time and time again that implementing more technology can make the difference between a passive learner and an active, excited, and motivated learner, and isn't that what we all want?