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the article was about how our race, gender, and class are classified on the internet.

With starting kids off young have we caused a new problem with laptops in the classroom? Kathy McManus blogged on August 14, 2008 about the banning of laptops from university classrooms. Within her blog she mentioned that "The laptop--the favorite in-class tool for college and university students across the country-is coming unplugged." Have we been abusing our laptops in class? I am not going to lie when I bring my laptop my browser ends up on facebook, or youtube checking out the newest funny stunt that some kids posted. The blog talks about how when used correctly the laptop can be a wonderful resource for a classroom but teachers cant monitor every laptop all the time.

The article I choose to read is very similar to Gee's Book we have been reading. It begins by talking about a teacher in New York, who is teaching a 6th grade class. But, this is no ordinary class, he is teaching these students through video games. These kids not only have the opportunity to watch video games and plot the characters movements, but they also have the chance to create games themselves. I then goes on to talk about what it would be like if the way we educated kids completely changed.

This article starts with talking about how students want to think outside of class. It states that they are scared sometimes of being judged on what they say or how they say it. Chat rooms or Backchannels is what they call them can help these students. In the article it shows some graphs about how the students used these chat rooms that were set up and how often they used them. according to the graphs as school seemed to continue, the students seemed to go in less. This article was great to understand the difference between in a classroom learning, and the way the web can teach the students and they can open up more and feel more safe in it. They don't want to learn between four walls all the time is stated in the article, and i think this is a great way to look at learning. broaden their horizons, because they all ready are and want to know that it is ok.

This entire article was about online chat rooms and how we can incorporate chat channels into schooling for collaboration, explanations, and discussion about topics in class. It talked about many of the good things and the bad things about chatting online and how we should be able to use chatting in school. The word backchannel is used for anything going on in the background while a teacher is lecturing or presenting. This idea of backchannel is talked about throughout the article. It explains what backchannel is, how we need to change schooling to work with it, what problems it creates, what things it works well with, why kids are using it so much, and how it could be used positively for classrooms.

Sara Corbett's New York Times article Learning by Playing, focuses on a New York City non-charter public school that uses an educational program called Quest to Learn. The school uses video games to help teach kids and sometimes the kids make video games. Quest to Learn was created by a game designer named Katie Salen with the intention of making schools more appealing and relevant to kids today. Classes often combine multiple subjects into quests, "where the quests blend skills from different subject areas" (Corbett). Teachers do not do as much instruction as they do guidance. The article talks about how most kids who drop out of high school simply found it too boring. Schools today do not permit the use of cell phones and internet use is only allowed to do school related work, which cuts students off from the world. According to Katie Salen, "there's been this assumption that school is the only place that learning is happening, that everything a kid is supposed to know is delivered between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., and it happens in the confines of a building" (Corbett). Kids today do so much more interesting things outside of school.

This article is about a veteran teacher who has taught in schools for 32 years all over Manhattan. He introduces a class in technology and game design. SARA CORBETT talkes about how students would benifit if teachers stepped away from what they thought was a typical classroom and focused on different approaches to reach and educate children. According to Sara Corbett, "Quest to Learn is organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today's children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration".

In "using the technology of today, in the classroom of today" authors Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, Jennifer Groff, Jason Haas start to give basis to the argument that technologies such as videogames and social networking sites help shape learning. They focus on how they are learning outside of school but in completely different ways than teachers focus on. They argue, "Nearly all institutions- business, industry, medicine, science and government - have harnessed aspects of these technologies for decades. Games and simulations have been a key component of training doctors and military personnel, but even businesses like PricewaterhouseCoopers used a game about a mining company in outer space to teach its employees about derivatives. Although that may seem a bit "off the wall," the fact is major corporations, the Department of Defense, and the medical community would not use these tools if they were not highly effective" to illustrate how corporations use videogames so the educational system shouldn't reject it them as a learning tool. They point out how videogames can serve as a simulation for real life just as mining in outer space can teach about derivatives. Videogames are also a highly interactive learning environment. Instead of being told information, students are right in the middle of the action and the learning. They also discuss how social networking is a new way of collaborating with other about a wide variety of subjects including school work. The authors write, "Of course, educators have long been aware that learning is a social activity, where learners construct their understanding not just through interaction with the material, but also through collaboratively constructing new knowledge with their peers" but teachers reject the use of social networking as means of learning because of the other aspects included safety or privacy. But what teachers can learn from social sites is that "'knowledge cultures' assembled in these o

This article is very rich with information that has to do with how digital games, social networks, and simulations can be involved in classrooms. With the involvement of them is more than just entertainment that children or people actually learn stuff from them.

The first piece of advice the article Facebook Education brings to teachers is to create an alternate profile for yourself in order to avoid any awkwardness from the students seeing the teachers personal life and another profile for former students. Facebook Groups is an essential part of updating classroom work and homework and the same goes for photos. Updating photos of class work and homework can be a helpful way for students to know how to approach their work.

written by Terry Miller just recently this past August. The first part of the article talks about how well students performed on the test and the huge improvement they are making over the years. The results of the test rose at least eight percent over this last year. California's top executive educator, California State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell, visited Cleveland Elementary School in northwest Pasadena. O'Connell said, "The growth in achievement is evident among every subgroup of students. However, we must continue to pay close attention to the achievement gap that shows students of color and poverty are trailing behind their peers. He is concern for those students of the lower class and those of the African American race. O'Connell is trying to figure out a way to help this proficiency and narrow this academic chasm.

In the online article Zero- Thumb Game How To Tame Texting, written by Sara Bernard, directly focuses on how to use texting as a tool in the classroom. This article doesn't look at texting as a horrible thing that needs. Another main topic in this article is how comfortable students are with text talk, that it creates an atmosphere where passive students feel as if they can participate. This directly shows how students feel more comfortable to participate because they are more comfortable with the technology. So maybe this idea of text messaging in the classroom isn't such a mad idea after all, it creates a comfortable environment for almost all students, and creates a new form of teaching when to use the text talk and when not to.

The article was about a study done by an Irish doctor that noticed that children would do better in math and reading if they made the same movemnts they made while they were in the womb.Children who were having issues in learning and understanding subjects in school were now doing much better after attending several Primary Movement classes. This article is very much related to the subject for my research memo in that I want to investigate about the impacts that children have while they are in the womb and whether children who are read to have a later advantage in their reading, writing and math skills while they grow up opposed to those who arent.

This article discusses a study done with 5-6 graders and their faculty. It talks about how allowing 24/7 access to laptops for each student in the class effects certain tasks that they are asked to complete that shows different skills.

"A novel public school in New York City has taken the video game as its model for how to teach. Students use video games and design them as part of their classes. As Quest to Learn is wrapping up its first year, those behind the program say game-based learning is integral to 21st century literacy" The article took James Gee's idea and really wanted to make a school that bases its learning through video game. It talks about the idea and the system that they created and the article also addresses the issues of the pressure to meet the marks they want to show success.

I watch one of his videos in another class and thought he was really interesting. He talks about race and issue we have today that you don't always notice.

This article talks about the increase in usage of the internet, cell phone technology, game tech, wireless by age, internet usage by age, ethnicity, class, year, twitter, and other social networks. This article is very useful for anyone who needs information on how teens today have become the majority of tench users in todays's world. Very interesting

In this short video a group of children ranging from kindergartners to 12th grade students they share there thoughts about how teaching should be changed. They feel it is necessary to make a change to the way teachers teach in the schools. Technology is advancing rapidly and what they learn in class today is not going to be useful information for them in the future.

I also want to tell you and share with you how my team and I have been using mushrooms over the last three years. Not like that. (Laughter) We're using mushrooms to create an entirely new class of materials, which perform a lot like plastics during their use, but are made from crop waste and are totally compostable at the end of their lives.

This is a whole website on 21st Century education, but i focused on this part of the website. In this part it describes how technology is needed in today's classrooms and how this class would be structured. The way they will be physically structured as well as the material and how this material would be taught.