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Much of the technology for the classroom of the "future" actually exists now. The difference in the future will be that it will be much more common and used as a matter of course.

Connectivity and "embeddedness" will be the guiding principles: connectivity, in the sense that whatever device pupils do their work on will not lead to a cul-de-sac: it will be straightforward to start work on a handheld computer in one place and continue on a laptop somewhere else; embeddedness, in the sense that you won't have to think about what you're using, because it will all be part of the fabric of living. These two ideas are, of course, closely related.

Teachers will continue to be the single most important element in the learning process.

He saw students pouring energy into memorizing bits of information that he knew they’d later forget. So he structured the rest of the syllabus around creating the simulation. Now he gets rid of about 40 percent of the rules of the game each semester so that students have to come up with new rules to determine how the interactions will play out. “The most learning happens there,” he says.

World Sim materials go up on a class “wiki,” a collection of Web pages that professor and students edit. Building new-media literacy is one of Wesch’s goals. Very few students arrive at his class knowing how to use digital tools such as wikis.

“There’s nothing more important than loving your students,” Wesch says, his office full of props from the simulation. “Before I lecture I start getting nervous ... so I meditate on this idea of ‘Love your students.’“It completely displaces all of that anxiety, because you recognize, it’s not about me, it’s about them.”

And if you can't eat around it, or drink around it, just don't buy it. Education is messy - if your carpet or upholstery can't be easily cleaned, you've bought the wrong stuff.

Design so that lighting varies, bright, dim, warm, cool. The idea of uniform room lighting, pulled from turn-of-the-20th-century German factory design, has never been appropriate for human use

Design so that noise levels can vary as well. Not everyone needs auditory chaos, but many do. serve everyone. Don't pick "50 year" furniture.

are people confusing talking to people online with deep, connected learning? Does being part of a social networking site or a NING community mean you are going deep- growing  in your ability to co-construct or deconstruct knowledge? Does it mean you are collaborating if you post, reply to a post, Tweet, or engage in a #edchat conversation? Are we moving toward an acceptance of superficiality as a replacement for deep learning? Has our multiple choice  culture trained our brains to believe that innovation is the holy grail?

If all I do is network I do not shift or grow because I am missing the opportunity to go deep and actually learn by doing. It takes both: Networks and Community. Online, global communities of practice and f2f learning communities in my local context.

Imagine the deep learning that can be produced when we come together in learning communities and do some of the following (below).

As for those other 18 credits, Cencich and Khalil say they are confident that students will learn just as well online as they did in the classroom.

For professors, it means that no one would be losing his or her job — for now, anyway

PASSHE faces the usual doubts about fully online language instruction — especially in the context of a whole degree program, which would theoretically shepherd students all the way from ignorance to proficiency without ever having them cross the threshold of a classroom.

While I was reading this article I was very critical and was wondering whether this course was going to be just lecturing by simply recording and showing the lesson and how these two professors could assess so many students in terms of time and in terms to have an assessment which would not make them cheat as this is an online environment. Well, in the last part of the article the answer is clearly expressed they do show a recording but on the online lesson they actually use the lesson to discuss project in smaller groups. Do not personally know how many smaller groups they would create and of how many members however the idea is excellent to me.