How far have we come so far?

Honestly? I came into this course hoping to learn about some new tools... tools that I could bring back to my board... my position... to the students I interact with. What I've found, is that we are all focusing on the same subset of tools to enable learning independence and nurture creativity in our classroom.

Does that mean that we are stagnating? Or does it mean that we have come to see that we shouldn't live in an "app for that" education system where one tool does one job. I look at everything I've done in my past role as a curriculum consultant, and the biggest impact for student engagement and learning with technology has come with the Google Apps for Education platform. 

Yes.... Office does the same things and is the tool of choice for businesses and yes... I do think it is a better product... BUT and a large BUT... it isn't a better tool for our students (and me too). I don't want to spend more than 20 minutes explaining how to use a tool. I think if it takes longer than this, students better be in a technology class. I want the focus to be on what the student is learning. I want to them to achieve curriculum goals while at the same time, being able to show off their learning in a variety of different and exciting ways. Google does this... and from the sounds of it, by reading the posts and comments of others, many others in the class see the same things.  

We are all in this education thing together. We need to focus less on the tools and more on the what are you doing with it. What is your end goal? Is the technology necessary for what you are doing or is it just a distraction? Are you assuming that just because you are using technology in the classroom that students are learning better or engaged... I hope not.