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That relationship meant that, rather than working in relative isolation, our faculty worked together to create and implement standards-based projects. Rather than acting as directive teachers, our faculty members were more like coaches in a student-led inquiry environment. Rather than relying on books and worksheets, our faculty led students through a less certain learning path. Rather than perceiving critical thinking as a "result" (of directive teaching), we saw it as essentially an immersion mode in which exploration informs and develops students' thinking processes.

Finally, we identified student evaluation instruments to use throughout the project, including the culminating product.

Throughout any given project, we must be able to informally touch base at any time. Backup resources should be available (when computers fail, for example). We need to plan together in a very detailed, day-to-day way. We have to be able to easily communicate "on the fly." How we introduce the project to students is much more important than we thought (and we thought it was very important). As a teaching group, we must maintain a flexible, problem-solving attitude to productively work through the inevitable implementation challenges.

n addition, we are still grappling with how to best prepare our students to be successful in a project-based learning environment when they have difficulty working together cooperatively.

In one neat experiment, participants rewarded students’ punctuality or punished tardiness for 15 days, then evaluated whether carrots or sticks worked better. Verdict: punishment. Unbeknownst to the “teachers,” the exercise had been rigged: students arrived at random times (generated by computer) unrelated to what teachers did. Yet the teachers believed their intervention had an effect. (A nickel says parents fall for the same illusion.)

You know that searching various areas of the Web requires a variety of search tools. You are the information expert in your building. You are the search expert in your building. You share an every growing and shifting array of search tools that reach into blogs and wikis and Twitter and images and media and scholarly content.

You open your students to evolving strategies for collecting and evaluating information. You teach about tags, and hashtags, and feeds, and real-time searches and sources, as well as the traditional database approaches you learned way back in library school.

You work with learners to exploit push information technologies like RSS feeds and tags and saved databases and search engine searches relevant to their information needs.

You know that communication is the end-product of research and you teach learners how to communicate and participate creatively and engagingly. You consider new interactive and engaging communication tools for student projects. ● Include and collaborate with your learners. You let them in. You fill your physical and virtual space with student work, student contributions—their video productions, their original music, their art.

Know and celebrate that students can now publish their written work digitally. (See these pathfinders: Digital Publishing, Digital Storytelling)

Your collection–on- and offline–includes student work. You use digital publishing tools to help students share and celebrate their written and artistic work.

You welcome and host telecommunications events and group gathering for planning and research and social networking.

You realize you will often have to partner and teach in classroom teachers’ classrooms. One-to-one classrooms change your teaching logistics. You teach virtually. You are available across the school via email and chat.

Content experts are a necessity, but there is no excuse to be media illiterate Let students be your guidance if you need help with technology “Media Literate” means willing to learn continuously about tech Using new tools is necessary — new learners have new tools Media savviness doesn’t necessarily mean great teacher Content knowledge is a necessity to evaluate the quality of sources Must remember that many teachers are in different places regarding their tech knowledge — differentiating support is necessary How do Schools of Ed play into this?  What’s their responsibility?

Typically our grading systems reward successful test taking more than successful learning.

Create an environment where they have as much freedom as possible. 

If you’re content isn’t relevant to the learners, they’ll just tune out and you’re wasting time and money.

If you do need to assess their understanding, perhaps there’s a better way to do so.

But the Achilles' heel - commonplace with educational technology - was the teachers. They felt they needed far greater training in how to integrate the resources into their lesson plans.

Preliminary results from a US military "digital tutor" project suggested the time needed to become an expert in information technology could be reduced from years to months, said the White House.