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Professional Development received the most votes by a decent margin. This is so frequently cited by educators (as in these survey results from earlier this year), yet often seems to be overlooked or shortchanged in technology implementations in our schools. Educational institutions and school districts spend large sums on technology procurement, but often fail to allocate sufficient funds and resources to train educators on how to use the tools and how best to leverage them in the classroom.

Other learning theories that provide a foundation for CSCL include distributed cognition, problem-based learning, cognitive apprenticeship, and situated learning. Each of these learning theories focuses on the social aspect of learning and knowledge building. Each theory recognizes that learning and knowledge building involve inter-personal activities including conversation, argument, and negotiation.[4]

The theory suggests that learning is not a matter of accepting fixed facts, but is the dynamic, on-going, and evolving result of complex interactions primarily taking place within communities of people.

Collaboration theory proposes that technology in support of CSCL should provide new types of media that foster the building of collaborative knowing; facilitate the comparison of knowledge built by different types and sizes of groups; and help collaborative groups with the act of negotiating the knowledge they are building. Further, these technologies and designs should strive to remove the teacher as the bottleneck in the communication process. In other words, the teacher should not have to act as the conduit for communication between students or as the avenue by which information is dispensed. Finally, collaboration theory-influenced technologies will strive to increase the quantity and quality of learning moments via computer-simulated situations.[12]

While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. And lately, that something looks like teachers' jobs, particularly to those on the receiving end of pink slips. Granted, we haven't implemented a robot army of teachers to replace those expensive human salaries yet (South Korea is working on the robot teacher technology. I'll keep you posted.). But we are laying off teachers in mass numbers. Teachers know their jobs are on the line, something that's incredibly demoralizing for a profession already struggles mightily to retain qualified people.

it's hard not to see that wealth as having political not just economic impact. Indeed, the same week that Bill Gates spoke to the Council of Chief State School Officers about ending pay increases for graduate degrees in teaching, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued almost the very same statement. What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Well, nothing... and everything.

One of education historian Diane Ravitch's oft-uttered complaints is that we now have a bunch of billionaires like Gates dictating education policy and education reform, without ever having been classroom teachers themselves (or without having attended public school). But the skepticism about Khan Academy isn't just a matter of wealth or credentials of Khan or his backers. It's a matter of pedagogy.