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The Indiana Department of Education is thoughtfully considering exactly how to incorporate technology into the classroom, resisting buying new technologies based on trends or marketing pressure or the desire to keep up; they are trying to carefully select tools that will help children learn in the classroom and improve performance rather than have technology for technology's sake. I think that this is a very important difference and one that every school that is purchasing new technologies for the classroom should consider very carefully.

Author makes predictions for 2012, including increase in blended learning. A video of PBS Newshour speaks of school choices in Indiana - public school in other areas, private school, or public charter school with military rituals.

What about providing students iPads so that they purchase textbooks on these devices to save resources for both the students and the school? Can we assume that all students will be comfortable using an iPad, or might there be implications for students with learning differences? What about the socioeconomic gap for students who cannot afford a computer to LOAD the books onto their iPads (even if the iPads themselves were provided)?

Apparently my simulation idea about having students take on roles as career professionals has already been done. A drove of statistical consultants (the students) are helping the mayor (NPC), get re-elected. The most interesting Worked Example is Modern Prometheus, where students learn about literature and writing through a MUVE.

A 3D multi-user environment that immerses children in real-world, socially and academically meaningful activities. Ran across this doing some research for the VPA. It's the richest example on an online learning environment that I've seen, and similar to something I'd envisioned but dismissed as not currently realistic--apparently I was wrong! I would love to give this a test drive.

Ethno is an on-line Java program that helps you analyze sequential events. Prerequisite analysis produces a diagram showing how some events are necessary for other events, and how abstract events are represented in concrete happenings.

Another example of a one-to-one laptop program in schools. Interesting to think of this from the standpoints of the various stakeholders, and how awesome is it that we have so many representatives in our classroom alone - teachers, parents, siblings, caregivers, researchers, and of course, publishers :-) Sally Ryan for The New York Times MUNSTER, Ind. - Laura Norman used to ask her seventh-grade scientists to take out their and flip to Page Such-and-Such. Now, she tells them to take out their laptops.