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"When you move an entire district into a digital environment a lot of things change. What doesn't change is the fact that everything revolves around academic achievement."

"Rather the answer is to shift our mindsets from a focus on volume to a focus on value. " - Conversation Starter - HarvardBusiness.org

"Imagine walking into a public library filled with PlayStations, Wii game consoles, and electric keyboards pumped up to maximum volume."

"anyone anywhere to take M.I.T. courses online free of charge - and for the first time earn official certificates for demonstrating mastery of the subjects taught. "

"Called competency-based education, this new model looks at what students should know when they complete a certain degree, and allows them to acquire that knowledge by independently making their way through lessons. It also allows students who come into school with knowledge in a certain area to pass tests to prove it, rather than forcing them to take classes and pay for credits on information they already know."

What about the social factor?

"Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward."

The TED talk further distinguish tasks into two types, and reveals that incentives doesn't work with the type of work requires cognitive skills. It points out that intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose will work better to enhance efficiency. The situations in my classroom clearly backup this statement. Every time when I am doing simple translation word to word with my students in a timed situation, incentive such as candies, points work perfectly. Students performed well under that simply reward system. But when the task change into creating sentences with the given vocabulary, students' attentions shift from getting rewards to proving their ability or mastery. As a language teacher, I understand that as the difficult of the content increase, the effect of rewards decrease accordingly. To increase students' intrinsic motivation, cultivate self-motivated students is the key to success.

"The development of new technology continues to have an impact on learning. While on the one hand, new technology allows schools and instructors to offer learning in new ways, educators nonetheless continue to face limitations imposed by technology, and sometimes the lack of technology. While access to the internet has increased greatly over the last decade, some schools continue to experience bandwidth shortages and most schools do not have enough computers for every student. Yet, this is changing, and the pace of this change will continue to accelerate."

"Educators, researchers, and policymakers at the state and national level are keeping close tabs on Pittsfield, which has become an incubator for a critical experiment in school reform. The goal: a stronger connection between academic learning and the kind of real-world experience that advocates say can translate into postsecondary success."