So imagine this: A student arrives in school in the morning and answers five questions that will be calculated in a customized algorithm to figure out what she'll be doing that day. That algorithm will decide which teacher she'll work with, her level of learning based on what she learned the previous day, and her specific activities. The system completely subverts the traditional classroom model of one teacher for 25- 30 students per classroom. And each student learns in different modalities throughout the day: individually with computer software, with groups, with a virtual tutor, with a live tutor, and so on.

Seretta picked FirstClass to serve as the school's unified messaging and collaboration solution. Accustomed to paper and more traditional means of communication, many staff members and faculty were reluctant to embrace the new system. Seretta didn't give in. "We went from zero to 90 percent adoption within three months, so there was no time for hand wringing or debate," said Seretta. "We simply said no more paper, unless it involved internal documents that require signatures."

what is school? what should school be? why the factory model?

At Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers' science lectures. Down the road, at Cienega High School, students who own laptops can register for "digital sections" of several English, history and science classes. And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create - and share - lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable Internet sites.

Leonardo da Vinci was a change agent. You probably know it already, it's worth repeating. At the time of birth, you are endowed with the same potential he had. Today, we need more than genius to make things happen though.

Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.

Eliminate the clutter with Unclutterer, the blog about getting and staying organized.

Will the transhuman technologies that our accelerating future promises enable us to increase our empathy to others? Or will their use decrease our ability to understand 'the other' that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures? As the world grows smaller and more connected, humans will grow ever more divergent because of their possession - or not - of a multitude of transhuman technologies, and so the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. In theory, sensory/media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy.Practically, empathy is created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating social empathy, but has actually been the engine of social/cultural liberalization and change. I will demonstrate both the positive and negative affects on empathy through the increasing reliance we have on transhuman media technologies and how I believe storytelling is the key to empathy creation.

Every Monday, All Things Considered will air its new series called All Tech Considered to explore the sometimes daunting - always changing - world of technology. Are you baffled by your cell phone? Wondering what your kids mean when they say they're tweeting on Twitter? Whatever it may be, All Tech Considered is here to explore it with you."

The Pew Internet & American Life Project will create and fund original, academic-quality research that explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source for timely information on the Internet's growth and societal impact, through research that is scrupulously impartial.

...less than a month before the Feb. 17 deadline, so many American households have yet to take the necessary steps to continue to watch over-the-air television - more than 6.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research - that Congress has considered giving them more time.

Tomorrow marks a turning point in the history of our schools as well as our country. Note how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom we honor today, had to confront the cold, hard, in-your-face prejudice of a legally segregated system, while the next president, Barack Obama, speaks of a softer negligence, illuminated by the frequently heard phrase, "These kids can't learn."

Critical Mass: How Digital Technology Will Define the Way You Live Digital communities are where you live-that's "you" as in Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, which recognizes and celebrates "the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." This Digital Communities Special Report discusses how the 120 million Americans who are active online users and creators of content and services are changing the world by redefining it around their preferences and predilections, and by the technologies they use and the way they use them. Also see http://www.accela.com/products/whitepapers.asp

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to "serious" work.

The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in 1990, the year they were born. It is instead an effort to identify the worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2008. Of course, our students come from many backgrounds and different traditions and these generalizations may not apply to all. The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory. It is also not deliberately designed to make readers feel really old! We welcome correspondence, suggestions, and requests regarding the Mindset List.

Revenue from music sold over the Internet, via mobile phones and in other digital forms, rose by 25 percent last year, to $3.7 billion, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a report set for publication Friday. Digital sales accounted for 20 percent of the industry's revenue, up from 15 percent a year earlier.