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What the Research Found

The study results indicated that, in general, using interactive whiteboards was associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement. This means that we can expect a student at the 50th percentile in a classroom without the technology to increase to the 66th percentile in a classroom using whiteboards. In addition, three features inherent in interactive whiteboards have a statistically significant relationship with student achievement. The first is the learner-response device—handheld voting devices that students use to enter their responses to questions. The percentage of students providing the correct answer is then immediately displayed on the board in a bar graph or pie chart. Using voting devices was associated with a 26 percentile point gain in student achievement. A second feature is the use of graphics and other visuals to represent information. These include downloaded pictures and video clips from the Internet, sites such as Google Earth, and graphs and charts. Use of these aids was also associated with a 26 percentile point gain in student achievement. A third feature is the interactive whiteboard reinforcer—applications that teachers can use to signal that an answer is correct or to present information in an unusual context. These applications include dragging and dropping correct answers into specific locations, acknowledging correct answers with virtual applause, and uncovering information hidden under objects. These practices were associated with a 31 percentile point gain in student achievement.

This school year, the 1.1 million-student New York City system launched a new text-subscription service that notifies parents in English or Spanish of school news and a series of webinars on topics of relevance to parents. The 640,000-student Los Angeles school district hired its first-ever director of social media this past spring, whose main charge is communicating and sharing district information with parents and students via tools such as YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr.

In the 182,000-student Fairfax County school system in Virginia, 84,500 people have subscribed to the district's enhanced news and information email and text service, the district's Facebook page has 26,000 "likes," and its Twitter account has 8,100 followers

digital technologies to improve communication between the school and parents

classics they could adopt into the Y.A. family. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies are just a sampling

The look and age of the characters—from the lightning bolt on Harry Potter’s forehead (J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series) to the shaved head of Egg (Cecil Castelluci’s Boy Proof) The location of the stories—from a 1452 AD copy shop in Mainz, Germany (Matthew Skelton’s Endymion Spring) to the exotic tarpits (Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice) The action and plotting—vivid, fast-paced scenes and action The core conflicts—blackmail (Markus Zusak’s I Am the Messenger), date rape (Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable), telekinesis (Stephen King’s ,Carrie), performance enhancing drugs (Robert Lipsyte’s Raiders Night), and poverty (Markus Zusak’s Fighting Ruben Wolfe) Tone, voice, and point of view The linguistic and structural tricks the writers employ The characteristics that define what many are calling a “genre”

Christopher Paul Curtis said, “if the novel lets one child see that there is a real potential for beauty and fun and emotion in a book, I’m not greedy, I’ll happily take that”

Students have discovered that learning is no longer bound to the confines of the school building and schools are beginning to realise that teaching students how to use these technologies effectively for academic purposes is essential if they want their students to engage in the use of social networking appropriately, less sporadically and more spectacularly.

The use of the internet is becoming an ever more integral part of young people’s lives and, as a result, they are communicating with each other on an unprecedented scale.

In my view, teaching and learning need to reflect these social changes and conform to the needs and expectations of today’s young people.

Given this insight

SMTs are reshaping theway students communicate

They utilize wall posts, event notifications, and tweets to inform students about upcoming

When a student can be so engaged and motivated, this type of learning tool becomes an important part of the curriculum. Clegg (1991) pointed out the most important predictor of learning is the instructional context and not necessarily the actual game, but the collaborative and cooperative learning built into the overall experience, offering an engaging environment for information assimilation.

Games create competitive and collaborative situations making learning fun and engaging; meeting the many needs of the students (Weiss & Loebbeck, 2008). During the early grades, teachers spend up to eight hours with their students each day; they could utilize the interactive and social aspects in games in order to realize additional learning in the classroom and use it to support other subjects (Klopfer, Osterweil, & Salen, 2009).