Here it is Wednesday afternoon, and I can’t stop pacing the floor — well, in between playing with my Legos, that is. Pacing, playing Legos. Pacing. Playing Legos. — Pacing — Playing Legos — Blogging!!!….

Why? you may ask. Because I’m impatiently waiting for a decision from Judge Martinez about the lawsuit trying to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Well, I did interrupt my pacing and playing Legos long enough to catch a great Your Hub article by Douglas County’s own Karin Piper: More than 500 kids may lose in Dougco Scholarship lawsuit. You should check it out, too.

If after reading Piper’s article you need to get your mind off the whole lawsuit and local voucher situation, may I recommend a piece by Innosight Institute’s Michael Horn about why digital learning will liberate teachers:

Today, teachers spend a significant amount of time engaged in what we call “monolithic” activities—one-size-fits-all, standardized activities that are designed to reach the mythical middle of a class of students. As documented in the book Delivering on the Promise: The Education Revolution, this includes such things as lecturing, managing classroom behavior, scoring papers and tests, preparing for state testing, updating grade books—and I’d add to the list such things as lesson planning for one-size-fits-none lessons (see Chapter 5 of Disrupting Class).

…[Most teachers] can’t really focus on facilitating actual learning. In what is an incredibly noble field in which adults try to make a meaningful difference in the lives of their students, today’s system works against them doing so at every twist and turn.

Read the entire article to find out what Horn says about the tremendous potential of digital learning to help transform the professional lives of many teachers.

That’s all I was going to say, but then I just realized that the two largely unrelated articles I shared in this post were written, respectively, by Horn and Piper. (The waiting for the injunction decision is really getting to my 5-year-old nerves.) Yes, a coincidence, but what can I say? Maybe a little bit of the classic Baroque Water Music piece Alla Hornpipe will help ease your nerves — or at least give you something catchy to hum while you’re pacing the floor along with me:

Just don’t be a smart-aleck and suggest that I can’t Handel all this waiting. (You can thank one of my unnamed Education Policy Center friends for all the horrible puns today.)