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We talk about what teaching and learning ought to look like, without ever really being clear about what we want an education to do. Pictures have different purposes. Their intent may be to record an event, evoke an emotion, preserve a memory, provide documentation, honor an individual, or just please the eye. A great work of art might do all of those things, but it is unrealistic to expect all art to accomplish all of them. Knowing more about the subject of the work, the mind of the artists, the goals of the person who commissioned the work, and cultural setting in which the work was produced my help us understand more about how to view a work of art. So what exactly is it that we are looking for in public education? Do we value symmetry over emphasis? Are we looking for accuracy or imagination? Should education inspire or indoctrinate? Do we want an education that gives us answers or asks us questions? There are a lot of people critiquing the “art” of educating our children. Is the picture of public education all wrong? Or is it that we don’t always know how to look, or where to stand, or what to look for once we’ve got to where we need to be? I don’t know the answers, but it seems to me that the questions are worth asking.

Web 2.0 has inspired intense and growing interest, particularly as wikis, weblogs (blogs), really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, social networking sites, tag-based folksonomies, and peer-to-peer media-sharing applications have gained traction in all sectors of the education industry (Allen 2004; Alexander 2006)

Web 2.0 allows customization, personalization, and rich opportunities for networking and collaboration, all of which offer considerable potential for addressing the needs of today's diverse student body (Bryant 2006).

In contrast to earlier e-learning approaches that simply replicated traditional models, the Web 2.0 movement with its associated array of social software tools offers opportunities to move away from the last century's highly centralized, industrial model of learning and toward individual learner empowerment through designs that focus on collaborative, networked interaction (Rogers et al. 2007; Sims 2006; Sheely 2006)

The key to this transformation is not to standardize education but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of the each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions (238). The curriculum should be personalized. Learning happens in the  minds and souls of individuals–not in the databases of multiple-choice tests (248).

Sir Ken lays out the case for personalizing our kids’ educations in the context of transforming (not reforming) schools:

Sir Ken Robinson’s new book “The Element”

Now, with study becoming a lifelong enterprise, and with the advent of a galaxy of new media, “learning” seems once again poised to become all things to all people, be they lay or scholarly.

learning that do not occur automatically, readily, naturally, or by dint of simply living in a certain place at a certain time

we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before

We also need to recognise that, largely, those teachers who use technology the most effectively and lead the way with its use are also, by and large, excellent teachers with or without the technology.This helps us see what many of us appreciate already: the one biggest element of improving education, making learning more creatively inclined and entrepreneurial, is the teacher. It's not curriculum, class sizes (though smaller class sizes make the teacher's life easier) or even assessment. This is something I've been reporting back from research for two years (and which I've been blown out on more times than I can count). It's not about letting students lead the way with technology and "show us teachers" how it's done. Students are generally quite narrow in their knowledge of how to harness technology or creative venture.No, it's how teachers and parents teach that is important. It is, to use a piece of edu-jargon, pedagogy, both at school and at home.

with students batched by age and subject to standardised tests for quality before shipping to the real world. Conformity has thus always had a higher value than diversity

"We need teachers that are performance-driven."

we were looking for the teacher that transcended the bureaucracy that often plagues the public school system, the myriad forms of student malaise, and really got into the faces of students intellectually.

teachers that thrived on chaos, that were reflective in times of high levels of uncertainty, and that were always, regardless of popular opinion, willing to reinvent themselves for the sake of learning.

The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system.

While some may be content to sit on the sidelines and wait until this cultural reorganization plays itself out, as educators you have no such luxury. Everything hits you first, and with full force. You are embedded within this change, as much so as this generation of students.

We make much of the difference between “digital immigrants”, such as ourselves, and “digital natives”, such as these children. These kids are entirely comfortable within the digital world, having never known anything else. We casually assume that this difference is merely a quantitative facility. In fact, the difference is almost entirely qualitative. The schema upon which their world-views are based, the literal ‘rules of their world’, are completely different.

WASHINGTON -- Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.

the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.

On the topic of online learning, there is a steady stream of studies, but many of them focus on limited issues or lack control groups. The Education Department report said that it had identified more than 1,000 empirical studies of online learning that were published from 1996 through July 2008. For its conclusions, however, the Education Department considered only a small number (51) of independent studies that met strict criteria. They had to contrast an online teaching experience to a face-to-face situation, measure student learning outcomes, use a "rigorous research design," and provide adequate information to calculate the differences.

Public narrative embraces a number of specialty literacies, including math literacy, research literacy, and even citizenship literacy, to name a few. Understanding the evolving nature of literacy is important because it enables us to understand the emerging nature of illiteracy as well. After all, regardless of the literacy under consideration, the illiterate get left out.

Modern literacy has always meant being able to both read and write narrative in the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. Just being able to read is not sufficient.

The act of creating original media forces students to lift the hood, so to speak, and see media's intricate workings that conspire to do one thing above all others: make the final media product appear smooth, effortless, and natural. "Writing media" compels reflection about reading media, which is crucial in an era in which professional media makers view young people largely in terms of market share.

"Yes." Part of the cost for textbook publishers is trying to deal with at least 50 sets of standards, and that isn't efficient for anyone.

talked about meetings she has attended with other agencies to develop a plan to get more bandwidth to rural areas in the country

Office of Educational Technology Still Up in the Air The topic of a new director for the Office of Educational Technology provided the least amount of discussion. Shelton refused comment on who that person might be, when a name might be released, or even where the position would be placed in the organization. Beginning with the first Director, Linda Roberts under Secretary Richard Riley in the Clinton administration and continuing through John Bailey, Susan Patrick, and Tim Magner under President Bush, this position has always reported directly to the secretary. Rumor in Washington is that the position will report to the assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, Shelton, and not the secretary.

"Our kids today will give everything [in terms of personal information] away, but it's not at all clear how this will shake out in the long run,"

And what about the person you don't really know who wants to be your friend because you have some friends in common? According to Hoffman, that new friend may just be mining your social circle for information. As networks grow and more friends of friends (and their friends) are accepted by users, it's unclear who can be trusted.

Hoffman illustrated how social connections are made online and the ease with which a stranger can become part of a network.