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The cellphone industry has a suggestion for improving the math skills of American students: spend more time on cellphones in the classroom.

Some critics already are denouncing the effort as a blatantly self-serving maneuver to break into the big educational market. But proponents of selling cellphones to schools counter that they are simply making the same kind of pitch that the computer industry has been profitably making to educators since the 1980s.

“This is a device kids have, it’s a device they are familiar with and want to take advantage of,” said Shawn Gross, director of Digital Millennial Consulting, which received a $1 million grant from Qualcomm to conduct the research.

Researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project polled Internet users and found that 11 percent are using Twitter and similar short-form online message services or status updates.

Profiling the Twitter set, Pew found that they are prone to mobile computing, frequently dashing off status updates from their smartphones or laptops using a wireless connection.

Roughly 20 percent of online adults between the ages of 18 and 34 said they use status-update services, compared with four percent of adults between the ages of 55 and 64, and just four percent of those 65 and older.

The Washington Post recently published a really interesting article on the ability of well-connected parents to influence the decisions of their local school districts (hat tip to The Science Goddess). The term ‘well-connected’ refers to parents’ abilities to use online tools to communicate and mobilize (rather than to their connections to people with power).

Below are a few examples of parents pushing back on their local school systems. Parent tools include blogs, online petitions, and even administration countdown timers! I’ve linked to individual posts but you can click on the headers to see the blogs in their entirety. Has MCPS dropped American History from its curriculum? Change mayoral control? Beware the mushroom cloud! Media pig Wanted: a full-day kindergarten slot - do you feel lucky?

Online communication technologies have greatly amplified the abilities of parents to voice their opinions and mobilize for desired change. Activist parents now have a bevy of new tools and strategies to help facilitate their agendas and they are not afraid to use them. School organizations are going to have to get used to this new state of affairs in which parent activism and criticism are more public, permanent, and far-reaching. I’m pretty sure that most school leaders haven’t really thought about this…

Welcome to the official Web site for the 2001 American-Canadian Mt. Everest Expedition, brought to you by Touchstone Energy. This educational Web site is designed for teachers and students in elementary and middle school grades.

The cellphone industry has a suggestion for improving the math skills of American students: spend more time on cellphones in the classroom.

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