Top 10 Most Important Ideas from Mod 5 (M5)

1.  Technology has greatly expanded the idea of global collaboration, that students can collaborate far outside of the walls of the classroom. New perspectives and better sources that have long been unavailable are becoming more available and widespread. Students have a great varieties of options to pick new collaborators from.
2. Encourage creativity and the use of technology in problem-solving tasks. Effective and transformative uses for technology will increase student engagement.
3. Digital storytelling can be a powerful tool in a classroom. The most basic description of this is combining some form of multimedia with a story, but there are endless methods to do this with technology.
4. Digital citizenship can be more effectively taught with a greater focus on what students should be doing as opposed to what they shouldn't. Although caution and awareness are necessary, students will feel more compelled to embrace technology when opened up positively to the world of technology. Some key skills to be taught include balance, inclusivity, safety, and insightfulness.
5. Establish group norms ahead of time. How will students be grouped? How will accountability be shared? What tools should students be using? Having established norms will provide some structure and organization.
6. Global collaboration has already created so many opportunities for the world. Problems have been solved and innovations have been reached because of the willingness of others to collaborate with each across long distances and difficult barriers.
7. Students should be thinking about the skills they need to use before beginning on collaborative projects. Some of these keys skills include accepting criticism, communication, and empathy. Have students consider what they want out of a partner and to emulate that. 
8. Be open to using new technologies that you're unfamiliar with. Testing out different applications and tools will help you experiment and find what you and your students find most effective. Embracing curiosity will help bring everyone to their maximum engagement.
9. In this day and age, it's time for digital citizenship and technological standards to be interwoven into early curriculum. Access and use has spread downward through schools to the point where elementary students need to learn to be responsible and accountable for their uses of technology.
10. Writing is very important in the classroom for many reasons. It can give students a way to summarize or synthesize information they've learned. This can help them build stronger connections in their brains.