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"You may have heard already that dig­i­tal lit­er­acy and increased tech­ni­cal capac­ity are crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the K-12 edu­ca­tion. I hap­pen to agree. The prob­lem is that pub­lic edu­ca­tion hasn't had suf­fi­cient means to put enough com­put­ing devices in the hands of stu­dents. Com­put­ers have been expen­sive and if you have had a com­puter lab that you could visit with your class once a week then you had more than most. Now with the evo­lu­tion of mobile plat­forms, net­books, tablets, and "Bring Your Own Tech­nol­ogy" pro­grams (like this one explained my @micwalker) there is a warm feel­ing in the edu­ca­tion com­mu­nity that mean­ing­ful 1 to 1 access in the class­room is pos­si­ble every­where. Teach­ers are excited, stu­dents are stoked, and tech­nol­ogy direc­tors are pet­ri­fied. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less includ­ing live streams from our class­rooms, social media at the hands of every learner, and every stu­dent becom­ing the smartest kid in school because she can search Google on her iPad. I am ener­gized that the promise of edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy - a world of con­nected learn­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and cre­ative design to engage and impact stu­dent achieve­ment - may finally be mature enough to imple­ment in all classrooms."