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"City of Immigrants is set in New York City in 1907. Players take on the role of a fourteen year-old Jewish immigrant named Lena Brodsky. Lena is from Russia and she arrived in New York after her older brother who came to New York a few years earlier and sent money home to buy passage for family members. Lena is now trying to earn money to send home so that her parents can come to New York. Throughout the game you meet other people in Lena's life in New York who are faced with tough choices just like she is."

"He lost me, though, when he pushed the notion of digital immigrants and digital natives on the audience. His language was all too familiar:  Today's kids are savvy.  Today's teachers are not.  Fixing the problem depends on our willingness to put kids in charge of technology in our schools.  At one point, he even asked all of the teachers under 30 in the audience to raise their hands.  "There's your future," he said. #ouch"

...the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants will become less relevant. Clearly, as we work to create and improve the future, we need to imagine a new set of distinctions. I suggest we think in terms of digital wisdom.

"Welcome to your new classroom. I am sure you are going to explain and teach in a way that I might never understand. You see, I come from a day of filmstrip projectors that beeped, ditto paper that left my fingers blue and the students enjoying the scent, bells that really did ring out a mechanical melody, 16 millimeter films that, if in color, amazed the kids. In fact, if these films were shown backwards it provided bonus entertainment. In recent years I have heard words that are so strange to me. These words include foreign terms such as twitter, blog, wiki, Skype, web 2.0, clickers, and interactive whiteboards. I have heard all this talk about 21st century skills and I am not even sure if I can tell you what they are. So there you have it. I am not one of those digital natives, nor am I a digital immigrant! I may not even be an analog native or immigrant. So, even though I do not know all the new terms, I thought that I might give you a list of ten items I feel just might ensure success no matter what century it is."

"Teachers are always afraid that their students will know more than them about the technology. In my opinion, students are more aptly called digital tourists than digital natives. They are exploring this unknown territory at the same time as we are. The only difference is that most students are usually not afraid to push every button. As adults we like directions and are often afraid to traverse unknown territory without a map. My advice? Let go and have fun - let the journey through technology integration be more about learning and less about control."

There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn't been the case.

"Finland has remade its education system to help kids like Lara Osman - born to poor, immigrant parents - grow up to be middle-class success stories. "

"The kindergarten student, a shy, Mandarin-speaking five-year-old immigrant in the tiny community of Sangudo, Alta., had barely spoken a word during the first three months of class. So her teacher was surprised one day last year when the girl struck up a conversation. The subject of their animated discussion? An image on the screen of an iPad. "

Prominent New York real estate developer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Arik Kislin immigrated to the United States with his family from Ukraine in the early 1970s.

Prominent New York real estate developer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Arik Kislin immigrated to the United States with his family from Ukraine in the early 1970s.

Prominent New York real estate developer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Arik Kislin immigrated to the USA

"The students had been researching Ellis Island in Social Studies and were finding out how it became a famous gateway for millions of immigrants entering the United States. They wanted to represent that information visually, so they took all that they learned in class and turned it into a news report. The script took some time to write but with Google Docs they could all collaborate on the same document at home or at school in order to get the job done. When the script was finished, they were ready to record their video. I set up the green screen, put the iPad on a tripod, and gave the students some basics on what they would need to know in order to make a successful green screen movie on the iPad. They were up and running in no time and filmed their own video whenever they weren't all on screen at the same time! We used the Teleprompter Pro Lite app to scroll their script in front of them, just like the professionals do. "

The Canada Year Book 2008, now online, is a fabulous reference on Canada's society and economy, written in accessible, plain language. Its articles, which include links to charts and tables, describe the latest trends in 31 current topics, including population, children and youth, families, energy, government, health, as well as ethnic diversity and immigration. The Canada Year Book is popular with secondary students and a useful reference for teachers of intermediate grades.