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"But Illich's message in Tools for Conviviality is to manage the power of technology: not to usurp it, but in certain cases restrict it. This is partly because any usurping would inevitably be done by a more powerful technology, thus increasing the pathology of technological power, not managing it."

Arguments against technology in schools - and better ones for using it.

"All of these emerging technology pieces - quest-based learning, virtual worlds, augmented reality, mobile learning and game design - overlap, Dawley said. And together, they help EdTech figure out how what's happening in society can translate to education."

Looks like what Taylor was saying.

"The future of higher education: how technology will shape learning is an Economist Intelligence Unit white paper, sponsored by the New Media Consortium. The Economist Intelligence Unit's editorial team executed the survey, conducted the interviews and wrote the report. The findings and views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor."

The General Education Initiative (GEI) provides the foundation from which all students have the opportunity to develop to their full potential. Students, through participation in the First Year Experience, Discovery Learning Experiences, Capstones, and their academic coursework, will have the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge that will enable them to achieve the UD 10 Goals to Success. These goals are designed to prepare students for life in the technologically sophisticated, diverse, highly communicative and globally integrated world in which they will live and work; and to offer students the opportunity to expand their own horizons, areas of interest and intellectual development.

"The primary purpose of educators is to help people improve in some way. In a deep and overarching way, the second purpose of educators should be to improve our ability to educate. "Openness" and "learning analytics" are two of the buzzwords currently in vogue in educational technology. Independently, these two approaches can help educators make some headway toward improvement. When combined, however, these approaches enable continuous quality improvement on a scale never before imagined."

"Despite extensive efforts to better integrate the learning experience during the college years, systemic institutional structures work against such integration--as does only an incipient understanding among educators of the integrative potential of the Web technologies our culture has fully adopted but which educators distrust and even ban."

The Science Leadership Academy is a partnership high school between the School District of Philadelphia and The Franklin Institute. SLA is an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning that opened its doors on September 7, 2006. SLA provides a rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum with a focus on science, technology, mathematics and entrepreneurship. Students at SLA learn in a project-based environment where the core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection are emphasized in all classes.

"The study also revealed a significant deviation between student survey results and actual computer-use practices. Students tend to under-report the amount of time they spend on distracting activities in class."

Missouri has passed a law making it illegal for state teachers to friend their students on Facebook.Governor Jay Nixon signed Missouri State Bill 54, which bans students and teachers from communicating and being "friends" on the social networking site. The law was created to prevent inappropriate relationships between children and teachers.

"The real disruptive threat is to the hundreds of institutions that emulate the elite few at the top. Many of them lack the prestige to hold off for-profit competition and the money that the elites can spend on online curriculum. But their challenge isn't fundamentally one of money: online tutorials don't have to be expensive to be effective, as the open-to-all Khan Academy has shown. The much greater challenge for traditional universities and colleges is changing their teaching traditions. Full-time faculty members must not only assent to the inclusion of online learning in the curriculum, they should lead it."

We understand that, somehow, learning can be distributed, that active learning is now easier to manage, that social learning has become a fact of life, that authentic learning opportunities are all around us, that information is all around us, that archiving and examining student work produces a whole new harvest of learning--we understand all this and we understand "high-impact learning practices," but we have yet to put it all together.

Note: There is a free Kindle version of their book. Supported through the MacArthur Foundation's $50 million initiative to explore how technology is changing kids and learning, Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg discuss learning in the digital age. More information is at www.digitallearning.macfound.org