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Recent reports from the Pew Internet and American Life Project show that 93 percent of youth ages 12 to 17 go online. Of those kids, 55 percent use social-networking sites (like Facebook and MySpace), and 64 percent are creating their own original content (such as blogs and wikis). Unlike watching television, using the Internet allows young people to take an active role; this move from consumption to participation affects the way they construct knowledge, develop their identity, and communicate with others. "Technology, from my perspective, has created an opportunity for students to use new digital-media resources to express themselves in ways that earlier generations could never have imagined,

Students today "more quickly tune out a teacher or someone who doesn't relate," she adds.

This is something Jim Gates hears a lot. As a coach for Pennsylvania's Classrooms for the Future project, he works to make technology available to students and teachers. He's also got a blog of his own called TipLine. "There's a growing disconnect between how kids embrace technology and where teachers' skill levels are," he says.

The millions of stimulus dollars to be spent on modernizing classrooms won't transform learning if students can't participate in the online forums that are reshaping the economy, journalism, government and society. If government has any helpful role to play in making school Web surfing safer, it should fund the development of online safety curricula and research into effective supervision software and strategies. Requiring more filtering would throw more resources at a failed approach. Another emerging and misguided strategy is requiring certain Web sites, such as social networks, to use age verification software; evading these new obstacles won't be much harder than evading filters.

If you are like me, you know from practical experience that your memory doesn’t tend to function as well when you are sleep-deprived

The bottom line: Sleep is important; get enough of it if you want to make sure your memory is functioning properly.

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