To facilitate the relationships between students and teachers, students and students, and students and content, universities need to provide students the ability to input additional information about themselves into the institutional repository, such as: URLs & RSS feeds for anything and everything the student wants to share with the learning community Social networking usernames (probably on an opt-in basis) Portfolio URLs (particularly to simplify program assessment activities) Assignment & artifact links (provided and used most frequently via the gradebook interface)

Integrating these technologies assumes: Web services compatibility to exchange data between systems and easily redisplay content as is or mashed-up via alternate interfaces RSS everywhere to aggregate content in a variety of places

While there’s still a lot of work to do, this feels like we’re getting closer to something real and doable. Thoughts?

With the subsidies, the end-cost to students’ families is only €50 to €150 for laptops that would otherwise sell for more than four times that amount. Qualified low-income families receive theirs for free. The Escola computers come with a one-year mobile broadband contract for €17 a month (discounted from the normal €23), and other plans are negotiable depending on the providers.

“It is most important to have scale,” says Grilo. “It can’t be just a pilot project confined to a small community. It must be everyone at once. That way, you have maximum cultural impact. Everyone feels part of the mainstream, not an anomaly or a test subject.”

Perhaps the most important lesson for countries seeking to emulate Portugal’s success is to design a policy that aligns the interests of all the major stakeholders: telecom providers, local OEMs, multinational partners, government ministries, local communities, schools, and the public.

The more students have an opportunity to read, speak and write the more they are going to understand the power of words.

The moment students craft words meant not just for the teacher and a few other peers, but for the wider world, is the moment students learn that a misplaced, mispronounced, or misspelled word has consequences far beyond a grade. These authentic learning opportunities are crucial to prepare students for the new realities of a more global and transparent world.

Students (and teachers) need to understand that everything they do communicates, whether they know what they are communicating or not.

Once students really figure out who they are and what they stand for then they can more comfortably be themselves. However, an important social skill that many students have difficulty grasping is knowing appropriate social norms in various settings.

Anyone can be a teacher... if you are alert and willing to learn from others. We need to teach students to be alert and willing to learn from sources other than textbooks. We need to teach students how to create and cultivate learning from a personal learning network, in order to extend the traditional capabilities of school from the limited hours of the school day to the unlimited hours beyond the school day. The informal classroom of life offers lessons far more valuable than the classroom if only we are open to learning from each other each and every day.

As part of their own intellectual retooling in the era of the media collage, teachers can begin by experimenting with a wide range of new media to determine how they best serve their own and their students' educational interests. A simple video can demonstrate a science process; a blog can generate an organic, integrated discussion about a piece of literature; new media in the form of games, documentaries, and digital stories can inform the study of complex social issues; and so on. Thus, a corollary to this guideline is simply, "Experiment fearlessly." Although experts may claim to understand the pedagogical implications of media, the reality is that media are evolving so quickly that teachers should trust their instincts as they explore what works. We are all learning together.

Both essay writing and blog writing are important, and for that reason, they should support rather than conflict with each other. Essays, such as the one you are reading right now, are suited for detailed argument development, whereas blog writing helps with prioritization, brevity, and clarity. The underlying shift here is one of audience: Only a small portion of readers read essays, whereas a large portion of the public reads Web material. Thus, the pressure is on for students to think and write clearly and precisely if they are to be effective contributors to the collective narrative of the Web.

The demands of digital literacy make clear that both research reports and stories represent important approaches to thinking and communicating; students need to be able to understand and use both forms. One of the more exciting pedagogical frontiers that awaits us is learning how to combine the two, blending the critical thinking of the former with the engagement of the latter. The report–story continuum is rich with opportunity to blend research and storytelling in interesting, effective ways within the domain of new media.

The new media collage depends on a combination of individual and collective thinking and creative endeavor. It requires all of us to express ourselves clearly as individuals, while merging our expression into the domain of public narrative. This can include everything from expecting students to craft a collaborative media collage project in language arts classes to requiring them to contribute to international wikis and collective research projects about global warming with colleagues they have never seen. What is key here is that these are now "normal" kinds of expression that carry over into the world of work and creative personal expression beyond school.

Students need to be media literate to understand how media technique influences perception and thinking. They also need to understand larger social issues that are inextricably linked to digital citizenship, such as security, environmental degradation, digital equity, and living in a multicultural, networked world. We want our students to use technology not only effectively and creatively, but also wisely, to be concerned with not just how to use digital tools, but also when to use them and why.

Fluency is the ability to practice literacy at the advanced levels required for sophisticated communication within social and workplace environments. Digital fluency facilitates the language of leadership and innovation that enables us to translate our ideas into compelling professional practice. The fluent will lead, the literate will follow, and the rest will get left behind.

Digital fluency is much more of a perspective than a technical skill set. Teachers who are truly digitally fluent will blend creativity and innovation into lesson plans, assignments, and projects and understand the role that digital tools can play in creating academic expectations that are authentically connected, both locally and globally, to their students' lives.

Focus on expression first and technology second—and everything will fall into place.