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As educators what do we want from e-textbooks?

need to be visually stunning

e-textbooks need to have an inherent interactivity that engages

In response to growing privacy concerns on the Internet, people are increasingly monitoring their online identities. And young Internet users are the most vigilant in restricting access to personal information, according to a Pew report.

Fifty-six percent of people now use search engines to look up information on themselves, as opposed to 47 percent in 2006

Jaimie is the founder and president of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Educationin New York City. The Cloud Institute monitors the evolving thinking and skills of the mostimportant champions of sustainability and transforms them into educational materials and apedagogical system that inspire young people to think about the world, their relationship to it,and their ability to influence it in an entirely new way. Cloud is one of the pioneers of Educationfor Sustainability (EfS) in the U.S. and has produced a set of EfS Standards and PerformanceIndicators that schools are using to innovate their own curricula to educate for sustainability.

Parents who try to secretly monitor their kids' online activities are wasting their time and should use an approach that builds trust and allows for conversation, says a psychologist who has studied texting, social networking and other online pursuits.

"Your job then is to learn and to assess, and to now use your parent radar to see if there might be any problems."

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.