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When web surfers use Google or Bing to look for information about, say, the national debt, the search results they now see at the top of the page might differ from those of their neighbor. That’s because all the major search engines have revamped their formulas to include social media data as key indicators of a website’s importance.

The reasoning behind this game-changing move is to help us sift through the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips. The major search companies recognize that we need a filtering system to save us from information overload, and the system they’ve created now relies more heavily on our history of preferences than on an objective calculation of relevance to bring certain resources to the front of the pack.

literacy is beginning to be defined as the ability to share meaning through symbol systems in order to fully participate in society

“text” is beginning to be understood as any form of expression or communication in fixed and tangible form that uses symbol systems, including language, still and moving images, graphic design, sound, music and interactivity.

New types of texts and new types of literacies have been emerging over a period of more than 50 years.

PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces.

behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.

“I have to make a storyboard complete with digital pictures, diagrams and text summaries on just about anything that happens,” Lieutenant Nuxoll told the Web site. “Conduct a key leader engagement? Make a storyboard. Award a microgrant? Make a storyboard.”

Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart: • Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs. • Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. • Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. • Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign. • The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea. • Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume? • Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one? • The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. • Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

Don't waste money on hardware that will quickly become outdated or dubious learning software peddled by opportunistic vendors. Instead, build a 21st century information infrastructure that gives teachers real-time feedback on how students are progressing in and out of the classroom — not just on standardized tests, but also a whole range of health, social and developmental outcomes.