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New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the "turned off and out of sight" rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.

A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework

"In our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all times, just like a pencil—it's an underused too

The phrase “21st-century skills” is everywhere in education policy discussions these days, from faculty lounges to the highest echelons of the U.S. education system.

Broadly speaking, it refers to a push for schools to teach ­­­critical-thinking, analytical, and technology skills, in addition to the “soft skills” of creativity, collaboration, and communication that some experts argue will be in high demand as the world increasingly shifts to a global, entrepreneurial, and service-based workplace.

But now a group of researchers, historians, and policymakers from across the political spectrum are raising a red flag about the agenda as embodied by the Tucson, Ariz.-based Partnership for 21st Century Skills, or P21, the leading advocacy group for 21st-century skills. Array of Skills In the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ vision for K-12 education, the arches of the rainbow depict outcomes, while the pools represent the resources needed to support those outcomes. But critics contend that states implementing this vision might focus too heavily on discrete skills instruction, at the expense of core content. SOURCE: Partnership for 21st Century Skills Unless states that sign on to the movement ensure that all students are also taught a body of explicit, well-sequenced content, a focus on skills will not help students develop higher-order critical-thinking abilities, they said at a panel discussion here in the nation’s capital last week.

The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.

1. Give, like, creative and real compliments.

2. Don’t let other people take up all your time or space or eat all your steak.

3. Put your connections to work for others so they get sweet stuff, too.

I think that the technology in projects like this is amazing, but it is meant to help us see beyond our current ideas of what technology is and can be. I think we need a new term that isn't so tied up with corporations and politics and which concentrates more on learning.

The word edtech concentrates too much on the technology and the teaching. I think we need something new. I'm thinking "edinfo" (education for an information based society) or "ednet" (education for a networked society) or even "create-ed" (education concentrating on creativity).