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Some $20 billion for school modernization and $1 billion for educational technology are among nearly $150 billion in funding targeted toward education in the House version of the new economic stimulus package, which lawmakers introduced Jan. 15.

This is an absolutely incredible blog post regarding the influx of stimulus money for 21st century classrooms and how it will (or won't) impact student learning without attention paid to instructional practices.

Alternative currency the future of money and a summary of recent systemic economic collapse A call to educate youth to utilize Internet for mutual currency exchange for skills given and received.

This is a great site for creating virtual art. Make art in the style of Piet Mondrian. This art style lends itself to maths with stimulus for fractions and proportion. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Art%2C+Craft+%26+Design

This site provides writing stimulus and advice for young writers. It explores a range of methods and thinking activities to help develop writing ideas. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

"The best economic stimulus is a high school diploma," said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia examine the economic value

If you had $100 billion to fix our schools, what would you do? A surprisingly smart list of suggestions for the education portion of the federal stimulus money is circulating in the education policy world. A group of experts claims authorship. I don't believe committees are capable of good ideas, so I doubt the alleged origins of the list. But let's put that aside for a moment and see what they've got. Better yet, why not come up with our own ideas? My column seeking cheap ways to improve education yielded interesting results. By contrast, think of what we could do if we had enough money to buy the contract of every great quarterback: guarantee the Redskins a Super Bowl victory. Many expensive school-fixing schemes proved just as insane and just as useless. But Barack Obama is president, and we are supposed to be hopeful.

A great set of images showing the prized possessions of children. Great discussion stimulus.

"A letter for a video-based 'mantle of the expert' project to make short TV show and ads. Letter has been rewritten to be generic, but can be adapted."

"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

Survey for districts to share how they are using/planning to use ARRA funds for technology.