IDT Group

Stories definitely can teach, but they are also designed to be engaging, to pull at your heart as well as your head, and to help viewers draw conclusions about their own lives or actions."

felt that if they knew that they could turn those writing pieces — particularly the personal narrative that is part of the portfolio — into digital stories, their feelings about writing might change."

students creating digital stories about a time each of their lives changed.

For insights into where teaching and learning is headed, it is worth watching the evolution of iPod use at Duke University (NC), well known for its 2004 iPod initiative.

"You know what an MMO is, right?"

The challenge is making a persistent online world that's both safe and compelling.

Cogs," robots wearing business suits who want to take away the fun of Toontown and create a bleak, industrial existence.

MMORPG

"We don't expect everyone to pay," we're told. "They're valuable to us if they're playing: they love the franchise, they're living in the world. It's good for the Disney company to keep this brand on the radar."

This includes a software system as well as human monitors that look for bad behavior, filter out inappropriate language in our chat systems before it can be seen by others, and prevent children from inadvertently exchanging personal information that could allow them to be identified in the real world, such as name, address, phone numbers, etc. When we find people breaking our rules, we apply levels of progressive discipline."

More Internet-enabled phones will be sold and activated in 2009 than personal computers.

Today, the computer for the rest of us is a phone.

Our infrastructure has to keep up with this growth just to maintain our current level of quality, but to actually make search smarter, our index and infrastructure need to grow at a pace FASTER than the web.

The MDF is the "Main Distribution Frame" where all the data converges, and the IDF's are "Intermediate Distribution Frames" where data goes out to the various machines.

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

ore than a decade ago, schools began investing heavily in laptops at the urging of school boards and parent groups who saw them as the key to the 21st century classroom. Following Maine’s lead in 2002, states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota helped buy laptops for thousands of students through statewide initiatives like “Classrooms for the Future

Classrooms for the Future

Many school administrators and teachers say laptops in the classroom have motivated even reluctant students to learn, resulting in higher attendance and lower detention and dropout rates.

Plus, the 1 to 1 solution that Apple proposed included comprehensive professional development. We knew this would be critical to the success of our program, and would otherwise have been an additional, major expense.

They’re especially excited because they know we’re behind them all the way.”

This technology initiative provided every student with a district-owned laptop computer for use during the school year, both in the classroom and at home. In addition, all six district buildings are wireless environments.

The second phase of the program implementation included intensive and ongoing training of the faculty with the goal of integrating technology into all curricular areas. As a result of the faculty cross-curricular training, students receive instruction in the use of applications and resources in the context of the learning environment, rather than in isolation. In addition to content instruction, students simultaneously are able to expand their digital literacy, further develop curiosity and creativity, and benefit from the experience of teaming and collaboration with peers, both locally and internationally.

Community support for the initiative has been an important part of the successful implementation.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums.

Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

a survey of district teachers and parents found that one-fifth of Matoaca students rarely or never used their laptops for learning.

paradigm of interaction that I call everyware.

and is delivered in a manner appropriate to our location and context.

put the relative threat of online predators in perspective, while at the same time noting that schools and parents must to more to give students the media literacy skills required to use the Internet responsibly.

On the other side of this digital divide, there are countless young people who feel like they are masters of digital technology, despite the fact they often use these tools naively or recklessly because of a lack media literacy and critical thinking skills.

videogames (arguably one of the most sophisticated forms of information technology to date)

five leading-edge thinkers in the field: James Paul Gee, J. C. Herz, Randy Hinrichs, Marc Prensky, and Ben Sawyer.

power-performanced learning

The graduate students are working with local area middle school science teachers to design interactive games that will help children grasp difficult science concepts.

"Students can conduct simulated science experiments or engage in team-learning activities in our engineering buildings from anywhere, anytime."

The special island is completely isolated and can be accessed only in school with a teacher's permission, not from home.