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See, when you're at the front of a wired classroom, you get to watch students peck at laptops, skitter their eyes over screens and, every now and then, toss a glance in your direction. Some of them are taking notes, some are chatting with friends or cruising sports sites. Few are giving their instructor undivided attention. It's crazy making.

one of the things we ported over to new media from traditional media was the notion of the passive audience.

that chittering back channel itself isn't the problem. The problem is, as instructors, we haven't given it anything useful to do. "Students are telling us they want to be engaged. So, we need to find a way to give them specific focus for that back channel. If they're doing stuff that's on-task we're going to get engaged learning and ownership," she says.