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Saugus Union School District in Santa Clarita, CA is launching a new program for its fourth-grade students that couples writing and science using ultra-mobile devices and collaborative learning software, among other technologies. According to information supplied to us by the district, the initiative is being funded through a $1.4 million EETT competitive grant the district recently won. The initiative, dubbed "Student Writing Achievement Through Technology Enhanced Collaboration" (SWATTEC), focuses on writing achievement within the science curriculum. EETT funding will provide access to Asus wireless ultra-mobile devices (UMDs) for all 1,700 fourth-grade students in the district, Web-based writing tools, and an online collaborative learning environment. It will also provide teachers with laptops, projectors, printers, interactive pads, mobile carts, and wireless hardware. Teachers are also receiving professional development for the initiative.

Susan Mutt from Digital Divide and Conquer has created a great rubric to assist students in understanding and analyzing the apps they find. The Student App Review Rubric has five criteria that students can use when assessing an app. Each of the criteria can be given a numerical number from 0 to 4 with 4 as the top grade. The 5 criteria are: 1. Looks and sound, 2. Engagement and motivation. 3. User friendly directions and instructions. 4. Performance and ease of use. 5. Differentiation in learning.

One teacher's students worked together in small groups to research, edit and improve the quality of "Wikipedia articles that were either overly brief or lacking in credible information, with the aim of increasing the quality of Wikipedia's coverage of East Asian religions." Once the improved articles were completed and graded, Chris added the articles back into Wikipedia

college based Twitter in classroom use, but applicable in lower grades. could use edmodo, google docs, etherpads, etc to foster same type of activity