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Virtual schools here and throughout California provide flexibility needed by child actors, musicians and serious athletes, and offer options to regular students dissatisfied with traditional classrooms. Vincent is enrolled in Capistrano Connections Academy, an Orange County charter school available in neighboring counties, including Riverside. "I get home just in time for my science live lesson," Vincent said by phone after skating practice. "I eat lunch and I start school." Several Inland districts operate their own virtual schools, including the Perris Union High School District. Lake Elsinore Unified School District will launch its online school in August. San Bernardino City Unified chartered a virtual school.

"Here are 10 ideas I have gathered this summer to kick parent communication up to the next level so that never again will they have to ask, "What'd you do at school today?" and hear the annoying, "nothing." Instead, parents will have already experienced the wonderful things that have been happening in their child's world and dinner table discussions will turn into celebrations and extensions of the learning happening at school."

"With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for "bring your own device"), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It's a promising idea, especially for schools that don't have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don't think that it's a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that's the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand."

"ABC Splash is a new education website for Australia, packed with 100s of videos, audio clips and games. Totally free to watch and play at home and in school."

In 2012 Musgrave Hill SS is entering a new phase in learning as we begin an Apple trial to investigate the effectiveness of iPads for all students, in particular special needs students in mainstream classrooms. We have three target classrooms working with iPads 1:2 with students and two sets of six iPads available for all classes to borrow for use inteaching and learning. The classes in the 1:2 project have several special needs students and a teams of teachers and aides who will support the students, their learning and the project. We will document the iPad Project and provide data that we hope will substantiate our belief that iPads and many other digital technologies are essential to support teaching and learning at our school in the 21st Century.