Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

But the Internet is different. In most cases it has no such gatekeepers: anyone and everyone can appear to be an "expert." So to get the most out of the Internet, students need to learn two things: first, how to find good information online; and second, how to evaluate the information they find.

Using the template The Five Ws of Cyberspace as a guide, young people can examine the authorship, purpose, perspective and presentation of Web sites, in order to determine their credibility.

Deconstructing Web Pages provides a step-by-step application of the five Ws to an actual Web site - with some interesting results.

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.

Levels of Technology Integration into the Curriculum

Basic technology skills and integration of technology into the curriculum go hand-in-hand to form teacher technology literacy.

In order to support these concepts, the groups have launched an awareness campaign that includes a public service announcement, which will be sent to the campaign headquarters of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, as well as questions for the candidates to help clarify their positions on "the future of American education and the modern classroom."

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define ourselves.

Multitaskers fool themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output deteriorates.

hildren like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

n fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.

FEW DISTRICTS HAVE MORE MILES on their 1-to-1 computing initiatives than Texas' Irving Independent School District, where the teachers have had laptops since 1996 and the current student program began with a pilot launched in 2001. Today, the Irving 1-to-1 program puts close to 12,000 laptops in the hands of students and teachers throughout the district.

After nearly a decade, Owen and her team have learned a few things about maintaining 1-to-1 computer programs in K-12 environments. The cornerstone of her strategy: personnel. Owen keeps two technicians on duty at the 1-to-1 high school campuses, and one at every other campus. On top of that, the district employs a central team of five technicians whose job it is to resolve problems that people at the campus level can't handle.

The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies is part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, approved by Congress at the end of July, and signed into law by President Bush on August 14.

The purpose of the Center shall be to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy…

Recently, the call for teaching 21st century skills and content in K-12 has gained considerable momentum and acceptance. Problem-solving, communication, and teamwork are examples of 21st century skills; a deep, integrated model of key science processes, for example, is 21st century content. To learn such 21st century content and skills, students must use 21st century information and communication technology.

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops," schools were spending their budgets on computer maintenance and had little left over to purchase educationally specific software and training to help teachers integrate the laptops into their existing curriculum. Generally speaking, the computers devolved into glorified typewriters and interfaces to Google.