There is, at least, growing support for experimentation: in March, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, released a draft National Educational Technology Plan that reads a bit like a manifesto for change, proposing among other things that the full force of technology be leveraged to meet “aggressive goals” and “grand” challenges, including increasing the percentage of the population that graduates from college to 60 percent from 39 percent in the next 10 years. What it takes to get there, the report suggests, is a “new kind of R.& D. for education” that encourages bold ideas and “high risk/high gain” endeavors — possibly even a school built around aliens, villains and video games.
For people interested in the new HTML 5 standard, there are some great things that will be possible. This article gives a quick overview of Canvas, which will use JavaScript to allow some pretty complicated visual effects. This guide assumes a good grasp of the current standards and of typical digital design tools.
