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This article outlines the ways in which teacher utilize social networking.

Good insights here-- about teacher recruitment, training, ongoing professional learning, and assessment.

Nicely draws attention to dissonance between what's expected of teachers and other professionals in high-stakes industries

Gateway source for all students: high school and college composition and journalism and student of life. Bookmark this source and then bookmark the hyperlinks in this article. Do you have the 10 (11 for the bonus) tech skills down? I certainly can improve in some of these areas.

This is a classic example of "gee whiz - it's magic" journalism about technology in education

It's intersting to think about what sorts of journalists get handed these kinds of stories. Should this be the education beat? The technology beat? This particular journalist doesn't seem to bring expertise of either kind. (It seems like it's just a Metro desk story.) Mostly he comes across as a shill for Apple.

The financial struggles of print media have led to the substitution of "piecework" journalists, often with no credentials for the story, for qualified professionals with strong backgrounds. Poor articles are the result...

If you are not familiar with connectedlearning.tv ... you should be. They tackle issues related to instructional design--and associated professional learning structures needed to transform education.

This article describes example of schools that implemented mobile technology into their classrooms, which descriptions of changing policies and uses.

A number of experiments are using new kinds of data - such as how many times a student has clicked on an e-textbook or logged in to a class Web page - to measure and guide learning in new ways. That could improve the student experience, but it could also end up dumbing down college, argues Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech.

Georgia's Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) has taken a huge step forward in its move to an all-digital education for its students: The district has partnered with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) to implement a single sign-on platform for delivering curriculum, assessment, analytics, professional development, parent information, and more.

We have read so much about the importance of teachers being prepped to use technology or getting professional development to increase their effectiveness of technology integration - here is one college giving it a try. Local children will learn using iPad tablet technology, thanks to a SUNY Cortland instructor and a group of College students who aspire to become teachers. "Learning About Technology," the final program in a semester-long series, takes place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Dec.

In contrast with the deployment issues of OLPC, here's an article on 1-1 initiative that focused on professional development, teacher collaboration, switching to a teacher selected, digital based curriculum with formative assessments, and a leased laptop support & deployment model.  (Full disclosure - the vendor is Apple).

"The best professional-development research shows that teachers need sustained contact hours (between 30 and 100) of training before altering their practices. So, she did a back-of-the envelope calculation about how much time it would take to implement 50 hours of formative-assessment training over the course of a school year...... Teachers would need about six hours a month, for eight months, which amounts to one early-close afternoon a month plus two additional hours. (Good luck with that in this economy.)"

Perhaps this is where technology can play an enabling role. Easy to use and real-time tools like Socrative or technology based learning environments with embedded formative assessments (like my formative assessment design proposal for VPA) could help reduce the time / training barriers for teachers to incorporate formative assessment into the teaching practice. At the very least, new curriculum initiatives aligned with common core standards SHOULD BE REQUIRED to incorporate formative-assessments. Unfortunately on PARCC is. "Of the two assessment consortia, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, is not developing formative-assessment resources as part of its federal grant. The other consortium, known as SMARTER Balanced, is."

The public school district in St. Louis, Missouri was awarded an Innovative Technology Education Fund grant to buy iPads for all students with autism in six autism-specific classrooms. This seems to be an example of utilizing an emerging technology in an excellent way with proper teacher training, rather than using technology for technology's sake. The schools will be advised on how to implement the iPads by an autism science and advocacy organization and have two full days of professional development planned.

This is great news on the autism-rights front! I know a severely autistic 21-year-old who is highly communicative because of the technology he has used since he was young.

Many of you have read my "rants" about buying iPads before the teacher's even know what to do with them. This article speaks to the need for Professional Development before full scale implementation.

This article discusses some tech careers and locations of these opportunities. "The results are clear. Mobile computing, cloud computing, social business, and business analytics have gone beyond niche status and are now part of any modern organization's core IT focus," said IBM's Jim Corgel, general manager of ISV and Developer Relations. "IT professionals who can develop the skills needed to work across these technologies will be ready to meet growing business demand in the coming years."

This articles featuring various stances on technology in the classroom. Arguments are made for technology-heavy curriculum, classrooms free of technology and responsible and effective technology use with thorough professional development and teacher facilitation. Another voice adding their two cents to the technology in the classroom conversation. I think that the most well informed angle expressed in the article is the opinion that we need better teachers and careful use of technology when it's inclusion will improve the learning potential more than if it weren't used.