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Gates sees this problem largely as a matter of incentives. Publications such as U.S. News and World Report reward colleges for the resources they spend on students and their exclusivity, but not necessarily for their results. High SAT scores will move a colleges up in the rankings (and so, it should be noted, will having a high graduation rate). Making sure your alums have a well-paid job, or a job at all, will not. To begin fixing this problem, we need need flip U.S. News' logic, Gates said, and reward schools that "take people with the low SAT and actually educate them well."  

E-readers have tremendous potential to entice reluctant readers to read more. A study that we recently conducted among low-reading-ability middle school students demonstrated that potential. Students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades became more engaged and motivated during their scheduled silent sustained reading periods when they were given the opportunity to use e-readers.

Responding to text is one way that students establish comprehension and improve their skill in understanding, predicting, and critically analyzing what they read. Larson (2009, 2010) observed students spontaneously using the highlight feature of the Kindle called "My Clippings" to leave personal notes and questions about what they were reading.

Overview Three-quarters of AP and NWP teachers say that the internet  and digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research habits, but 87% say these technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.”

Overall, the vast majority of these teachers say a top priority in today’s classrooms should be teaching students how to “judge the quality of online information.”

The internet and digital technologies are significantly impacting how students conduct research: 77% of these teachers say the overall impact is “mostly positive,” but they sound many cautionary notes

Students must still learn to communicate complex ideas. They must be able to create entire thoughts that run together in recognizable patterns in order to function in school and at work. Most importantly, they must be able to master this skill to participate as informed citizens in our shared civil discourse. Students who are flooded by facts think that the best way to answer a question is to search for more facts instead of organizing and marshalling the information they already have to develop a strong case. As long as the Internet is readily available, a search is faster and easier than a thoughtful and challenging discussion.

When my students learn to be nuanced, when they learn to listen carefully and find agreement, those are human tasks. When they learn to disagree carefully and logically, those are human tasks. These interactions that take place at the speed of conversation are essential building blocks for survival in the 21st or any other century.

Scholars now completing PhD’s have likely never known a world without the Internet and social media.

Ultimately, this technological transformation is going to have major implications on expert knowledge. The Internet increases voices and knowledge available to all. Elitism in the expert knowledge world is declining; the Internet democratizes knowledge building and use. Much more knowledge has become available, and the distinction between experts and ordinary folks, what Gramsci might have called “organic intellectuals,” is declining.

Academic bloggers frequently use blogs to keep up with the relevant literature in their field, thereby providing a kind of public note-taking and research-sharing exercise. Academic bloggers also use blogging as a rough draft for ideas they later develop fully for peer-reviewed papers or books.

A substantial literature documents large variation in teacher effectiveness at raising student achievement, providing motivation to identify highly effective and ineffective teachers early in their careers. Using data from New York City public schools, we estimate whether subjective evaluations of teacher effectiveness have predictive power for the achievement gains made by teachers’ future students. We find that these subjective evaluations have substantial power, comparable with and complementary to objective measures of teacher effectiveness taken from a teacher’s first year in the classroom.

Featuring over 3,500 content pages, MrNussbaum.com is one of the most popular destinations on the internet for parents, homeschoolers, teachers, and students. MrNussbaum.com was created by Greg Nussbaum, a Virginia public school teacher with experience teaching 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms.