From the article: South Forsyth High School in Georgia made the leap to BYOT in 2009 and saw the number of discipline referrals for technology abuse drop dramatically, principal Jason Branch said. In its first year of BYOT, the school had four discipline referrals for technology abuse, after amassing 400 over the previous two years. Instead of working to subvert tech barriers, students were protecting their privilege with what Branch called a "mutual respect and instructional understanding between teachers and students." Sion made its leap trusting students - and trusting teachers. "We have to change the way we teach," said Sion world history teacher Beth Ingram. "Our concept of what knowledge is is changing.

While this article doesn't answer if the iPad is the correct tool to aid learning in education, it represents two sides of the debate. 

From the article: " the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation said it is creating a $100,000 competition for software that can 'reliably automate' grading essays on state tests." Very interesting idea; is it feasible?

From the Consortium of School Networking - gives technology projections for one year, two to three years, and four to five years out

From the article: With 33 years of experience as a school librarian under her belt, Snyder said getting adults to understand the changing role and "look" of the library is an ongoing battle. "A lot of people still think of the library as a warehouse where you go to get a book or a magazine," she said. "To deal with it we just strive to be a model for helping people understand that a media center is a lot more than just a place for physical books."

THE Journal's five tech trends for education in 2012

"Those pursuing online learning will see that, though there is no 'silver bullet' solution, there is evidence to suggest that virtual learning (both part-time and full-time) can provide significant opportunity to save money," the report said. "Future innovation should include careful tracking of quality and outcomes to continue to provide more robust options for those experimenting with lower-cost delivery of instruction."

mobile devices enable learning anywhere and anytime, moving education beyond the industrial era model, where classrooms are the primary place of learning, the school day is the primary educational time, and the teacher is the primary source of information.

Therefore, the critical questions for America today have to be how we deploy more ultra-high-speed networks and applications in university towns to invent more high-value-added services and manufactured goods and how we educate more workers to do these jobs - the only way we can maintain a middle class.

Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students' standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students' lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.

From UW Stout: "A collection of rubrics for assessing portfolios, cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, podcast, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other web 2.0 projects."  Don't recreate the wheel!

"...for the most part, schools have incorporated these 21st century instructional techniques and tools as add-ons to the teacher-centric 19th century classroom structure, in which the majority of the curriculum is pulled from a textbook, and, despite best intentions, most students learn the same thing in the same way at the same time. Enter personalized learning, a student-centered teaching and learning model that acknowledges and accommodates the range of abilities, prior experiences, needs, and interests of each student--with the goal of moving every student to a higher standard of achievement. It's not a particularly new theory (versions of it have been around since the 19th century), but it has gained currency among many of today's education thought leaders, particularly because technology seems to be ready to do its part to provide a more personalized learning environment for every student."

KQED's perspective of upcoming educational trends

App created for school updates - although how it was created, and how much support was received from an app developer is somewhat nebulous.

Information to keep in mind when pushing cloud computing to the community and the school district

Interesting idea: "At most, the Apple devices are used for 40 minutes per day."

An argument for allowing students to make mistakes in the classroom