Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

Vicki Davis is a teacher and IT Director that utilizes technology to connect students with the world. She believes that students have the ability to learn, but that students learn in different ways. She customizes the curriculum to the students in the classroom and in doing so they are able to effectively learn how to use different aspects of technology. She teaches them how to use their resources by giving them new terms and the students research it themselves. So not only are they learning a new term on their own, but they are being empowered to learn on their own and using a multitude of resources.

I've come across many students, and even experienced this myself when doing research papers or when wanting to bake a different type of cookie. Instead of just giving up and saying "oh I just don't know how to do this" or "I can't do this so I give up" I discovered that I could empower myself and actually utilize the resources available to me. Not only was I learning from these experiences but I also gained a bit of confidence from realizing that I could do it and I could do it on my own. Vicki encourages and brings this independence out in her students. Aside from independence she is also encouraging the students to work with each other and other students across the world to learn the different uses of technology.