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A new poll conducted by the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media suggests that students are using cell phones and the internet to cheat on school exams. What's surprising, however, is not just the alarming number of students who say they cheat, but also the number of students who think it's OK to do so.

Melanie Wisount's resource wiki for teaching an Emerging Technologies course. Includes sample parent permission forms for student cell phone use in classroom, etc.

Good look at how one professor has managed to turn cell phone distractions into positive participation with the help of student's input in the classroom. Sometimes the phones just need to go away.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

I used to be a massive advocate of using mobile phones in lessons; the ways they could be used are just endless. I had students use them to research topics; find the answers to a question we didn't know, even as voting devices. I used them just rarely enough that students didn't take it as a given and rarely tried to use their phones for uses other than I intended. I even use them to avoid printing off sheet after sheet of homework, instead having students take a picture on their phone (with the added bonus that they can't lose the sheet).

A good collection of science flash games and activities to use in your class. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

CellCraft is a new Flash game that is designed to teach about cellular biology.  

"Printing was considered vulgar and only for the poor. Many aristocratic bibliophiles refused to disgrace their collections with the presence of a non-manuscript text. It fell to the lower classes to recognize the importance of the printing press. And they did - by the end of the fifteenth century, more than one thousand printers had printed between eight and ten million copies of more than forty thousand book titles. "

Your cell phone, IM, and social networks are all a digital extension of who you are. When someone you're with pressures you or disrespects you in those places, that's not cool.

Online safety for middle school students.

During his recent talk at the FETC 2009 conference in Orlando, FL, Benno opened with an interesting factoid: "Nine out of 10 students don't wear wristwatches," he said. "And the one that does doesn't use it as a timepiece; they use it to make a fashion statement." So why does that matter? It matters, said Benno, because it speaks to the fact that kids use technology in very different ways from what most of us are used to. From cell phones to iPods to a wide array of Web-based tools, "kids today are very fluid and open about their use of technology," Benno said. And if we are going to prepare them for a world that is constantly changing, he added, we need to rethink the ways we use and interact with these very same tools in the classroom.

The new essentials: Top 10 School Supplies for today's students. These free tools enable students to take advantage of the new learning possibilities the Web has to offer, such as making research easier, or finding better, cheaper ways of doing what they're already doing.

Futrelle's story "The Problem of Cell 13" makes a great introduction to the mystery genre for junior high students. It takes two or three classes to read aloud, with plenty of opportunities for students to guess the outcome.

Not every school will be able to afford one computer per child, let alone have the luxury of using parent-purchased cell phones for classroom instruction.

Yet another district technology director giving the rest of us a bad name. Good grief....justify yourself without using the paranoid buzzphrase, "To Protect the Children!"

Why are we afraid to confront district technology personnel and administrators over knee-jerk tragic decisions like this?

Great post-much needed discussion!

Article describing real science being done in virtual environments. Excellent read. Also discusses use of second life as an educational tool.