Ditch That Textbook Quotes

“Instead of testing a new idea or tool, “paralysis by analysis” takes hold. We overanalyze new options, mull over all of the things we don’t know, think about how students will react, and then we don’t act!”
― Matt Miller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Alvin Toffler explained in Future Shock, “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write. The illiterate will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” His message applies to teachers as well. If we can’t unlearn and relearn, education is headed for irrelevance. Quickly.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Don’t just teach a lesson, create an experience.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Different: Using teaching methods that differ from what students see day after day, class after class. Innovative: Inventing new ideas or modifying others’ ideas, then testing them in the classroom, even if their success isn’t guaranteed. Tech-laden: Incorporating digital sites, tools, and devices to learn more efficiently or in new and different ways. Creative: Tapping into students’ original ideas as well as creating and producing meaningful work. (After all, creative has the word create in it!) Hands-on: Letting students make and try things on their own. In”
― Matt Miller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Decide whether to pitch with facts or questions.”
― Matt Miller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“The motivation to ditch that textbook isn’t only—or even mostly—driven by a desire to go paperless or create technology-powered lessons; it’s about purpose. What do you want to do with the powerful platform you’ve been given?”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Our students are personal learning gurus, and great role models for us in this regard.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“A backchannel is a separate, often text-based, discussion students engage in while they’re receiving information”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Ditch that Mindset: Textbook ideas about education lead to stagnant (aka boring) teaching.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Ditching textbook mindsets means that we can give students freedom of choice. And as students work in their digital realms in our classrooms, we can motivate them by offering them differing levels of autonomy.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“one of our most important roles might not be answering questions, but helping students discover the right questions and showing them where and how to find the answers themselves.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“The skills and habits students learn in school directly contradict what their future employers want.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“One day, instead of asking questions out loud, I turned to TodaysMeet.com, a very simple, easy-to-use backchannel.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“But in the information age we live in, anyone can become an expert about anything. It’s time to accept that and (from time to time) allow our students be the experts.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“We’re all cheaters as educators. We cheat every day—every one of us—when we plan, when we grade, when we teach. We cheat. To an extent, we have to because there are only twenty-four hours in the day and one hundred sixty-eight hours in the week. When our list of really good, really important to-do items extends well beyond the slots in our hourly planners or calendar apps, we cheat.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“In the classroom, we can lavish praise on a student when he or she does exceptionally detailed, thought-provoking, or thorough work.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“The bottom line is that pedagogy must drive technology. The mindset that fuels digital learning is: Good teaching trumps good tools.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“Education today is driven by methods effective for producing good little factory workers, but the kind of work people do in today’s workforce is non-routine, interpersonal, and analytical.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

“I’m so thankful I am teaching during this time in history in which technology allows me to get more done in less time.”
― Matt Miiller, Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom