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Sexting and cyber bullying are the new "in" thing that happens on school campuses whether it be middle school or high school. Our schools cannot keep up with what is going on in our day in age with all the new technology that is going on. In my article it states that teachers and other school administrators are trying to figure out a way to keep children from doing this type of thing in school.

The Great School Staff and its main focus in wrote testing in California on standardized testing in schools. The first part of this article talks about all the different kinds of test there are through out elementary school and high school. It examines how schools are given a target in which their student's scores should follow under. These targets are called API growth targets. After the testing is complete the schools will receive rankings comparing similar schools and also comparing schools within in state. It states that these test are mainly important for helping parents understand how well their child is learning, and also how well are schools preparing their students. The results of this test can affect the children, teachers and schools. I

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.

"How Standardized Testing Damages Education," posted on, http://www.fairtest.org/facts/howharm.htm, the author talks about how standardized testing in schools today is damaging to students. The article talks about how the tests are biased but schools are still using it as a measurement of whether the student is ready for school or if they can go to the next grade. They also talk about how the tests have an emotional affect on the students. If a student is not able to go to the next grade, because of a bad test score, it's going to have a negative emotional affect and not necessarily improve their knowledge capabilities.

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing in regards to how they believe that standardized testing has damaged our education system. They begin by discussing how school use the tests the determine if students are ready for school, track them once they are in school, and help to develop and guide our schools curriculum, even though they are incredibly biased and are limited in their ability to measure achievement or ability in the students whom they are testing. They continue by arguing that these tests are very inaccurate when it comes to determining if a student is ready for school because they are 'overly academic and developmentally inappropriate in primary schooling.'

COOOOOL article--loved it.

Seeing No Progress, Some schools Drop Laptops I found this article in an old edition of The New York Times, Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops. In this article the author addresses the fact that in most schools having laptops given to children at such a young age was of no academic successes but instead has been making it a hassle for teachers to be able to teach their students properly. This article is aimed towards laptops being banned from elementary schools and high schools, due to the facts that studies have been done on the academic success that should have been brought on with these laptops were non- existent.

In the video, Ken Robinson says Schools kill Creativity, the speaker, Ken Robinson, talks about how not only the United States, but education systems all around the world, hinder children's creativity because that won't get them anywhere in life. He brings up this notion of creativity in schools being the most important thing, and programs like music, dance, and theatre are on the bottom of the totem pole where Math and English are perceived as the core subjects in schools. He challenges that notion. Why are Math and English at the top? The point of this video is to make people re-think creativity in school and the fact that education will not have a future if we keep dismissing the use of creativity in schools.

An expansion program was voted on to improve digital literacy in schools such as add faster internet connections in all school libraries.

The study "Teacher Concerns During Initial Implementation of a One-to-One Initiative as the Middle School Level" by Loretta Donovan, Kendall Hartley, and Neal Strudler tells of how every student having their own laptop to use is becoming more and more common in schools today. This is often a challenge for many teachers. Donovan et al conducted this study to "examine one-to-one computing access in the middle school settings from the perspective of those being asked to change," (263) which most of the time is teachers.

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.

Cathryn McConaghy, the author, discussed the difficulties with rural schools. This uses mainly Australia and its rural schools as an example. Some of they key details of this article were the length at which teachers remain at rural schools and the ideas teachers have before and after visiting a rural school.

This article explores the influence of teacher's assumptions and attitudes about boys and their learning practices. The introduction of this article begins explaining "overwhelming evidence that boys are falling behind in our education system"(74). It further explains that this problem is crucial to boys everywhere because boys with low literacy skills are less likely to engage, complete and advance their education. Henderson argues that there are multiple factors that are contributing to boy's low level or underachievement in learning. Teachers, students, parents, siblings and friends play a vital role in shaping children's literacy practices outside of school that are then instilled inside of school. Henderson asks an interesting question, why do the literacy practices at school, home and in the community have to be different? Why can't all of these practices be viewed equally important and valuable? Henderson questions whether boy's bad behavior in school is a result of underachievement or is it the cause of it? Do teacher's play the most important role in shaping children, especially boys, learning identity in school?

In this article, Social Networking Goes to School, by Michelle R. Davis it talks about how many schools are using social networking sites to communicate with schools from other countries. Social networking has changed the way teachers teach and students learn. As said by Davis in the article, "If you don't take that golden opportunity to teach students about the responsibility of using these things, you lose a teachable moment." If schools block them, they're preventing students from learning the skills they need to know."

The article "Using Instructional Technology in Transformed Learning Environments: An Evaluation of Project CHILD," by Sarah Butzin, claims that students are able to learn more and are more motivated when they are able to use technology and implement the Computers Helping Instruction and Learning Development (CHILD) project. Butzin studied the effects of technology by comparing two schools that were both technology-rich. One school implemented project CHILD and the other school implemented a more traditional design. According to the author, the CHILD method involves a cluster of three grades that are broken into smaller groups and remain with the same teachers throughout those three grades (K-2 and 3-5.) The more traditional learning style still involved the use of technology in day to day learning, but every year the students changed teachers and only worked within their grade level. The CHILD implementation makes it so that children can learn at their own pace and switch stations that include bookwork, one on one or small group time with the teacher, working with technology, and hands-on experience. Butzin claims that this style of learning showed positive outcomes for testing scores, classroom motivation, improvement in behavior, and increased parent involvement.

High Stakes Testing, by Miriam J. Metzger, Andrew J. Flanagin, talks about testing, and the No Child Left Behind Act and how it has affected schools and their methods of teaching. It explains how because of the No Child Left Behind Act the children are no longer being taught to know the information, but they are being taught so they can pass the tests and get the schools more money. The tests the students are taking are focusing on Mathematics and Reading...

In the article, "Why Schools Should Learn To Use Online Services Like Facebook & YouTube Rather Than Banning Them," Mike Masnick argues that incorporating Facebook and other social networking sites, would be beneficial to both students and teachers. He says that by trying to fuse these social media sites with the teacher's curriculum, it will make education and school work more relevant to the students lives.

This website is made of a survey done by The National Campaign. This sight has all of the facts. The articles states that this "sexting is the new craze" . These students aren't even high school. I like this website because it gives me facts of the people in this world, I know it is a small survey compared to the entire world but they are good statistics to work with. There is a movie called The Odd Girl Out. This movie portrays how harmful this subject is. This teenage girl starts high school and "makes friends". She soon finds out that these friends are fakes. She chops her hair off, she over doses on sleeping medication all because these "friends" are calling her fat and other degrading words.

In this article it states some facts that about who bullies, what cyber bullying is and if there is a way to stop it. Attacking someone on the internet is a lot easier to do because it can be from someone anonymous. It states in the article that most of the time the victim is someone that goes to the bully's school. The parents so be involved in the children's lives and ask question. Do not assume they are doing something bad on the internet. "All school children in the UK are taught to "zip it, block it and flag it" -- don't share information, block contacts and tell an adult."

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 article Myspace, Facebook promote Literacy, Debra Lau Whelan talks about how social networking sites can help you gain more than just friends. Social networking sites offer e-safety, "Staying safe, keeping personal information safe, protecting yourself and your belongings, making sure that we don't participate in bullying or other antisocial behavior, and helping out other people who might be affected by these issues, is a key part of digital citizenship." Responsibility becomes a central role on these sites because their safety is at risk. Kids are able to control childish behaviors or prevent themselves from making rash decisions by using safe tactics on the internet. These sites broaden horizons for the users, letting them talk to people they may not have talked to otherwise, creating a variety and diverse web culture, driving away from cliques on school playgrounds. "Collaboration, discovery, and becoming a team player are all encouraged because these sites promote working, thinking, and acting together." Social networking sites allow users to create groups online to help find other people with the same interest as you. This allows communication on a topic that many people all over the world share a common interest in. Diversity brings new ideas and helps these users see things in a different point of view. These teens are not trapped in just with their classroom but they can't interact with people all over the world. Teens messing around on the computer on social networking sites is not just leisure time wasted, "Being able to quickly adapt to new technologies, services, and environments is already regarded as a highly valuable skill by employers, and can facilitate both formal and informal learning," Computer skills are adapted from using these sites, making it easier for teens to perform computer tasks in the future at work. This article gave me a new outlook on Facebook and social networking sites. I always thought that these sites w