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In the US, 250000 students are enrolled in full-time public virtual schools in 30 states, according to Susan Patrick of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade association. Although that's just a fraction of the country's 50 million students, it has grown 30% each year. Some schools in Michigan already shown the advantage of digital learning.

This is an interesting article. I am just concerned that it is not unbiased or driven by an agenda other than improving education. I found this information about the Mackinac Center online: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mackinac-center-public-policy I am starting to realize that a lot of the technology in schools rhetoric is driven by corporate and political interests, and as the industry becomes ever more profitable, I'm worried that companies are going to jump in and try to influence policy, rushing through the movement toward the wrong kind of technology in schools- i.e. sacking half of the teaching staff and replacing them with cheap computers. I think one of our most important jobs as Harvard TIE students is to education the public about the right ways to adapt technology in the classroom, and the important role that teachers will continue to play in this movement.

"The notion of literacy has radically changed in the face of technologies that allow for different forms of expressions and levels of interaction, which is why teachers must adapt"

"In the post-textbook world, content mashups on social platforms like Edmodo will be more prevalent and will be accompanied by adaptive content sequences driven by smart engines. This feels like a jog sideways rather than a step forward."

Technology isn't explicit in this article, but it is ever-present in regards to this author's re-thinking of the classic book report. Instead of "same old, same old", this article suggests that students should be remixing the information they gather from books and recreating it in different ways - 21st century skills!!! "Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we've adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature."

This is a great resource to check out some ideas of how to assess 21st century skills. (This is in reference to our conversation in the section on Monday.) The rubric on the page (you can download it) uses the following categories as: Expertise (in at least one domain), Inquisitiveness (Exhibition of curiosity, inquisitiveness, wonder, openness and excitement), Flexiblity (and adaptability), Ambiguity (toleration of and response to ambiguity), Unique Ideas (original, unique and cogent ideas, phrasing and products)

Thought the list provided is interesting in terms of how they relate to 21st century learning: The new school models in the article "suggests 10 elements most common to all of the models: * Student-centered environments * Personalized learning * Competency-based progressions * Adaptive & engaging components * Deeper learning & character development * Rapid & flexible deployments * Dynamic models evolving with new tools * Platform-centric scaling * Leveraging teacher Leadership * Best Practices & Innovation "

Can social networks be an instructive technology? Since social networks are so popular, if their features can be used in education, there would be interesting results. However, nowadays, most of them are for entertainment uses.

Video games can improve cognition and foster positive behavior. (not that we didn't know that already...)

Do videogames boot brain function?

Ha ha. Booting brain function. Got it... I think. Maybe I need to go play a video game.