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This article focuses on the importance of using technology in schools. The author, Seymour Papert, compares how the introduction of computers into a school setting is very similar to providing pencils to people in a community who communicate entirely using oral language. How will the computers and pencils get used by the people in their communities? Papert expresses the realization that educators are often hesitant to change their practices and sometimes when implementing new concepts or tools, teachers find trivial ways to use them rather than seeing their full potential. Papert goes on to explain how technology can "intellectually engage" those not interested in the traditional learning that schools often offer to students. He gives an example of how a disengaged student can use technology to intellectually challenge himself, develop the ability to persist, and collaborate with people that have common learning interests. In addition, Papert says that the use of project based learning and technology allows students to "acquire knowledge for use" and not to just pass a test. The concept of being able to access learning regardless of the time of day and the learner's location is also discussed. Technology offers greater learning as it allows students to learn from a wide community of people and not just those the same age and grade. Even with the objective reasons provided by educators, to limit the amount of changes in schools, Papert believes that the students' knowledge and expertise that they acquire while using computers at home will drive schools to embrace technology. He knows that institutions believe change cannot happen due to the lack of funding available, limited teacher understanding and assumption of what "school" should look like. However, Papert believes that change will occur because children will require schools to keep up with the learning they are doing outside the school setting when it comes to the area of technology.

Using VoiceThread to Promote Learning Engagement and Success for All Students VoiceThread is one of many Web 2.0 tools created to help users communicate and collaborate around a varity of topics.   To create an individual VoiceThread, users can upload any combination of images, documents (e.g., from Word, Acrobat [PDF], Excel, or PowerPoint), and video clips to arrange these elements into a slide show. Teachers can then add comments to each slide in the VoiceThread by several different methods including typed text or recorded voice or video. Teachers can make a VoiceThread public, allowing other people to add their own comments to the slides, or set the VoiceThread to private, restricting comments to only invited users. Through this process, teachers can facilitate conversations around a series of images, videos, or an entire PowerPoint presentation with their students and provide them an opportunity to share their voice, literally, in the discussion in multiple ways. Individual account is free but you can only create 3 voicethreads.  A classroom account is encouraged for $60 a year. Benefits of Class Account 1. can register up to 100 students with no need for individual emails 2. teachers can access students usernames and passwords. 3. each student can create their own voicethread and it is private, only the class can see it. 4. all comments can be viewed and approved by the teacher before they are posted for the class to see. General Benefits of Voicethread 1. all types of learners can benefit from this tool 2. it can be used in whole class, small groups, or independently 3. it can be used in the classroom, computer lab, at home or anywhere there is access to internet 4. can be used in all subject areas.

"Computers have had a transformative impact on many fields, it is thus natural to expect that they are having an effect on educational practice leading to a dramatically fresher, more engaging and more powerful process of learning -educational wonderland." Two observations: 1. Computers do very little to aid learning. Their presence in the classroom along with relevant software does not automatically inspire teachers to rethink their teaching or students to adopt new modes of learning. Teachers do not radically transform what they would do without computers, although it may make things more efficient and fun. Computer technology may provide interesting and powerful learning opportunities, but these are not taken automatically, teachers and learners need to learn how to take advantage of them. 2. It is the whole culture of a learning environment, with or without computers, that can affect learning in important ways "It's not what technology can do, but what learning demands, best points up to the potential contributions of technology." Technology is helping things along, sometimes in crucial ways, rather than in itself doing the real work of teaching. Computers can become partners in cognition with learners, rightly used computers can enable what needs to happen in knowledge networking. Computers can make easier and more efficient what might need to be done in more cumbersome and convoluted ways.

Jacky, This article seems to fit well with your flipped classroom page!