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Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.

Getting students engaged in 400-year-old drama is usually a challenge, to put to mildly. But in Seale’s classroom, classic literature gets the Web 2.0 treatment. During Romeo and Juliet, for example, Seale used Ning.com to create a class-only social media group called Verona Lifestyles, where her students, posing as characters in the play, created profiles and posted updates and discussion forums. “Posting in character got them more engaged,” explains Seale, “and gave them confidence to tackle the language. They even took a stab at writing couplets and shared them on Ning

“It’s about initiating higher levels of engagement,” says Seale, “and making the learning more self-directed and self-motivated.” “Let’s face it,” she adds, “being literate today means more than reading words on a printed page and writing an essay.”

Digital technology, however, still suffers from an image problem. To their more boisterous critics, blogs, video games, wikis, and other social media have stunted the attention span and diluted the concentration of an entire generation. What’s more, Web sites provide not knowledge, but the lesser currency of “information,” broken down into bytes to be skimmed over and hyperlinked.

they brainstormed a list of tasks that they'd like the ELL students to be able to do with the tool. The list included support for textbooks in audio format, access to English language movies and videos, and internet access both at school and off campus (whether at home or a local WiFi hotspot).

from a teacher's perspective, it was extremely important that the tool allow students to record their voice so that their fluency could be monitored," explains Jennifer Wivagg, Comal ISD's instructional media specialist. "We needed a device that would allow them to make recordings at home. We also needed the tool to include translators, dictionaries, and other language-based tools that are important for an ESL student, and to be small enough for the students to carry in their pocket, so they have constant access to these important resources."