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must engage in ongoing capacity-building; ideally including a combination of coaching, mentoring, support and training.

Not surprisingly, technology investments seldom produce maximal educational returns. To strengthen this weak link, any consideration of purpose-built technologies must benefit from including strong training, professional development, and ongoing professional learning components.

You market, and your students share, books using social networking tools like Shelfari, Good Reads, or LibraryThing.

Your students blog or tweet or network in some way about what they are reading

You review and promote books in your own blogs and wikis and other websites. (Also Reading2.0 and BookLeads Wiki for book promotion ideas)

Put simply, project-based curriculum emphasizes learning through doing classroom projects that address a specific issue or challenge. Students typically carry out the projects in groups, and teachers guide them along

Tina Barseghian Editor of MindShift, a website about the future of learning Posted: January 7, 2011 02:48 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index Napa New Tech High: 5 Reasons This is the School of the Future Amazing Inspiring Funny Scary Hot Crazy Important Weird Read More: Computer Tech School , Education Technology , Napa New Tech High , New Tech High Napa , New Tech Network , New Technology High , School Computer , Tech School , Tech Schools , Education News share this story 11481122 Get Education Alerts Sign Up Submit this story digg reddit stumble What does the high school of the future look like? It's one that emphasizes useful, relevant skills that can be applied

At Napa New Tech, you'll hear very little lecturing and see few teacher-led activities. For this school, the decision to use project-based curriculum was based not only on what topics students should learn, but also what skills they should acquire in school.

We are aware of how much we don't know: that we have yet to explore the full pedagogical potential of learning online, of how it can change the ways we teach, the ways we learn, and the ways we connect.  

As we begin to experiment with how novel technologies might change learning and teaching, powerful forces threaten to neuter or constrain technology, propping up outdated educational practices rather than unfolding transformative ones.

All too often, during such wrenching transitions, the voice of the learner gets muffled.

Critically, pushing around symbols on paper is just a symbolic representation of the real math taking place within one’s head. When one does a calculation, whether it is by hand or by machine, an important feature of whether or not one can be said to be doing the calculation is whether or not one can predict the potential output from the algorithm, or if one understands the process they are using.

We also require, as a system, much more flexibility in the mathematics taught at the K-to-12 level. I’d like to see a system where many different types of mathematics are taught besides just the standard hierarchy leading to calculus.

This semester, we’ve chosen to create a social media campaign to raise awareness around modern slavery. This is the project-based part. It’s not enough for my students to learn about slavery, they need to do something with it, specifically “real world” projects that matter.

Teaching this way also allows me to teach real writing to my students. Before we started to create videos, my students looked at numerous YouTube videos about slavery. They focused on those they found powerful, and conversely, those that weren’t very effective. We analyzed the differences between the two. My students talked animatedly about how the powerful videos touched your emotions.

My students have started designing our curriculum units.

Top priorities include promoting a greater emphasis on depth over breadth in understanding science and getting young people to continually engage in the practices of both scientific inquiry and engineering design as part of the learning process.

core scientific concepts revisited at multiple grade levels to build on prior learning and help facilitate a deeper understanding.

“next generation”

However, one thing I have noticed when it comes to integrating information communication technologies (ICT), is that the teachers and the schools that really fly, the high performing schools...they don’t come to my PD. They don’t go to any PD. They understand that they, and their professional networks, are their own PD.

The problem with PD is that on the whole it treats teachers as ‘consumers’ of professional knowledge, and discourages teachers from thinking for themselves. The reality is that most of good practice with ICT is still to be developed. Teachers need to be ‘creators’ of professional knowledge.

Great teachers see themselves as ‘creators’ of professional knowledge. Through a continuous cycle of ‘planning, application, reflection’ great teachers develop improved ways to educate students, tailoring their teaching to the specific needs of the context within which they teach.

Post a list of norms for online and offline behavior and keep it up. Refer to it. Make it a part of your classroom culture.

No matter if you have a one-computer or a 10-computer classroom, you can have resources available and open at all times using the computer as a station. Can't find the right word when you're modeling writing an essay? Walk over to the computer while you are talking to the students and use visualthesarus.com to find just the right word.

#7. Take a photo of an interesting location with your cell phone, email it to yourself, and use it the next day to help teach a concept: descriptive writing about a setting, for example. Show students you are thinking of their learning even outside of the classroom. After all, learning shouldn't end at the bell.

Instead of exploring how new digital opportunities can support student-centered inquiry or otherwise enhance existing practices, today’s schools are preparing their teachers to use office automation and productivity tools like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

begins by introducing teachers to ways in which digital tools can be used to encourage higher-order thinking and innovative instruction across the curriculum.

Let me suggest that it is time to be done with this unnecessary conflict about 21st-century skills. Let us agree that we need all those forenamed skills, plus lots others, in addition to a deep understanding of history, literature, the arts, geography, civics, the sciences, and foreign languages.

Each class has students divided into groups of four to five paired together to learn course material and create projects. Teachers work with the groups to create a more individualized learning experience and enhance comprehension.

"We aren't just adding technology for technology's sake here," he said. "It really is a culture change taking place. There's nothing traditional about the way our students are learning. We really focus on creating an environment where students can learn subjects in a way they can relate to and a way that interests them."

Since classes are now project-based, students are graded on a variety of skills, including content, oral communications and work ethic.

Proactive leadership in developing a shared vision for educational technology among all education stakeholders including teachers and support staff, school and district administrators, teacher educators, students parents, and the community

Technology-related professional learning plans and opportunities with dedicated time to practice and share ideas

Consistent and reliable assistance for maintaining, renewing, and using ICT and digital learning resources

Researching What for Why? I enjoy research. I spend much of my time reading it. I also often find myself in sustained and vigorous conversations with colleagues from some of the leading research institutions from around the world...and it's time that I value very much. Indeed, the Foundation maintains a register of some of the leading research around 1-to-1 on our site....however, I am also sick and tried of the unrelenting practice of political leaders and educational policy makers who continually seek to justify inaction and limit the scope for innovation in the name of research. One only has to review the mountains of literature around the most effective ways to teach reading and the efficacy of small classes to conclude that too much educational research is based on loose assumptions, inappropriate methodologies, a blatant lack of rigor and ideological bias. Too often the funding base for educational research creates preconceptions about the outcomes, real or perceived, and the volume of research that swamps the education market seems to be more related to tenure or the attraction for doctoral topics, than a genuine need. It really is about time we took stock of the situation. For more than three decades we have seen an increasing stream of research that has targeted our use of technology in schools. What purpose has much of it served, other than to often significantly distract educators from continuing to develop innovative practice, and seek new ways to enga

How can we support innovative teachers taking risks, if every move is covered by a researcher measuring outcomes?

Why don't we start by working on the culture of our schools, and encourage those that are seeking to create a culture of innovation. Why don't we start thinking carefully about what it really means to support risk-taking in our schools; it seems the only risks people are interested in are about the evils of the net and beyond...how about we support our educational leaders who are creating new agendas for learning within their schools and seeking to genuinely leverage technology within an immersive environment to truly create worthwhile, authentic learning opportunities.

How can we help our students embed meaningful purpose into BYOT? 1. As educators and librarians we can model the best practices by balancing innovation with tradition and requiring high standards of critical thinking. 2. We can model our own learning in this new era by showing our own willingness to “learn, unlearn, and relearn ~Toffler” and allowing time to unplug and reflect on the meaning of our learning. 3. We can put people first!  Teaching and librarianship are service-oriented professions.  We are not books or buildings, we are human beings.  We are not robots (yet). Just kidding on that last line.  Putting people first requires admitting that they are more important than our tech gadgets which we all turn to throughout the day.

Courses should encourage open participation and meaningful engagement with real audiences where possible, including peers and the broader public.

Students have the right to understand the intended outcomes--educational, vocational, even philosophical--of an online program or initiative.

n an online environment, teachers no longer need to be sole authority figures but instead should share responsibility with learners at almost every turn.

this is what collaborative learning looks and sounds like in 21st-century schools. “Why shoul

”Top-down authoritative teaching styles – and, in some cases, courtesy titles as teachers become peers, friends and resource facilitators – are out, along with desks arranged in tidy rows, all seats facing forward. In the classroom of the past, students memorized and regurgitated on tests the facts teachers presented in lectures. In the classroom of the present and future, students increasingly take personal responsibility for their own educations. “We have given them res

Every single day, I am finding new connections that make kids’ education more exciting. If our kids didn’t see this vision and they didn’t see what is so powerful about it, it wouldn’t work.

Institutions should be teaching students about the importance of context in online communications, the fluidity of privacy, awareness of nuance, and the power of community-building through social media.

Students are learning and growing in tandem with faculty and staff. In the near future, judging someone’s social media postings from their pre-college days may be significantly reduced.

Victor: What is something educators can do right now to reimagine their schools?

Chris: I think what every educator should be able to do is to consider “What do I control, what do I have control over?” And by control, I don’t mean command-and-control teaching, I mean, if you’re a classroom teacher, what you own inside your classroom or, if you are a principal, within your school. Within the boundaries that we have control over, how can we develop visions of what we want in order to invest in our kids? Then, latch all of our systems and structures that we have control over to that overall vision. The way kids produce information, the way they consume information, the way they reflect, the way that we as educators grade, the way we sit kids in the classroom, anything that you have control over, ask yourself, “Does it leverage the best ideas that we have? Does it leverage the best vision for what we have for what we hope kids can do and learn and be with us?” If not, change your policies! Change your structures so that they are more closely aligned to that best vision of what we are and what we can be.

Chris: I think you let people see what is best. I think you let people what is possible. You stop making this one more thing that teachers have to do and help them see that using this technology will allow them to transform their practice.