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Balance media skills with life skillsIt's all about balance. But like an acrobat on a tightrope, balance takes effort. Here are some strategies for my high wire act:

Tying shoelaces and riding a bike are not 2 to 5 yr old skills. Too bad the study didn't look at relevant skills for that age set, or they could've done yet another story on computer use in early years of school, but this mismatched data doesn't say much. I do think that downtime is important. Ironically enough, I schedule it in for my kid daily.

Your points are excellent (as always) but I think we as parents should take some lessons from the digital world as well. You allude to this in your last point above - games are excellent for teaching all sorts of things,

In contrast to all this is the general sentiment among many teachers that "we need more PD!", or the always-amusing "How can they expect us to learn new things if all we get is a few PD days a year?"

That model is no longer sustainable and the days of PD as something that is done "to you" by "experts" a couple of times a year are over.

Learning needs to be ongoing. The world is changing. There are new tools that can help students learn, new ideas about learning, new brain research, new emerging technologies, new social structures, and so on

While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. And lately, that something looks like teachers' jobs, particularly to those on the receiving end of pink slips. Granted, we haven't implemented a robot army of teachers to replace those expensive human salaries yet (South Korea is working on the robot teacher technology. I'll keep you posted.). But we are laying off teachers in mass numbers. Teachers know their jobs are on the line, something that's incredibly demoralizing for a profession already struggles mightily to retain qualified people.

it's hard not to see that wealth as having political not just economic impact. Indeed, the same week that Bill Gates spoke to the Council of Chief State School Officers about ending pay increases for graduate degrees in teaching, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued almost the very same statement. What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Well, nothing... and everything.

One of education historian Diane Ravitch's oft-uttered complaints is that we now have a bunch of billionaires like Gates dictating education policy and education reform, without ever having been classroom teachers themselves (or without having attended public school). But the skepticism about Khan Academy isn't just a matter of wealth or credentials of Khan or his backers. It's a matter of pedagogy.

The standard model for asynchronous conversations is discussion forum software like vBulletin.  I've talked before about the significant value that can be obtained as part of Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank and how that translates in a Success Formula for Discussion Forums in Financial Services.  I also looked at Making Intranet Discussion Groups Effective.

However, I've struggled with the problem of destinations vs. social networks and the spread of conversation (see Forums vs. Social Networks). 

Talkwheel  is made to handle real-time group conversations and asynchronous ones.  It can act as an instant messaging service a bit like Yammer, HipChat for companies and other groups, but the layout is designed to make these discussions easier to see, archive, and work asynchronously.

 We used technology like people do at work – as a tool to helps us get our job done, learn and conduct research, and to connect and collaborate, to build communication skills, and to solve problems. The big insight: technology can power deeper learning.

These questions don’t center upon, nor are they dependent on, technology, though if technology is an integral part of our lives, some of the answers to these questions might lie in the use of technology.