Oompa Loompas

Desktop video conferencing knocks down classroom walls and brings subject experts and co-learners from all over the world into the classroom.

Such opportunities present great advantages to students who are now expected to develop skills valued by the international work community such as communication skills and global and cultural awareness.

The best moment to teach a student something is the moment they are curious about it — but what about when that moment happens outside of classroom hours? Online communication tools create opportunities for “the teachable moment” even if students are at home, at the mall, on a field trip, or anywhere else

Teachers can manage classroom activities even outside of classroom hours through synchronous, two-way online communication

Capturing such a conversation creates an instant reference:

As more professionals work from remote or distributed locations, the need for cheap, flexible communication tools has grown

Online communication tools put students in touch with distant family members, practicing experts, and their peers, wherever they may be located.

Mobiles are already in use as tools for education on many college and university campuses

ven mobiles that cannot run third-party applications can be used in the classroom. One of the simplest applications is to use short messaging system (SMS) messages to allow student response in place of expensive clicker systems. Products like Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com/) let teachers set up questions online and use a web page to tabulate, graph, and display the results to the class. Students can see, for example, how their answers as a class differ in pre- and post-quiz situations.

Third-party educational applications are readily available for the newest mobiles, and educational content is easy to find for almost every discipline

Mathematics. In addition to applications for flash cards and simple drill practice, math tools for mobiles like Kids’ Fraction Fun (http://www.nscpartners.com/kidsmathfun62233) help students practice skills they are learning in school in a game-like format on the iPod Touch. Science. Mobiles can be used to photograph results of experiments in the lab or outdoors. Students can take measurements using tools like Seismometer (http://coneri.se/iphone/), or perform calculations with tools like ChemiCal (http://www.twssworldwide.com/ChemiCal.html). Art History. Students in Bath, England, will be using Mscape (http://mscapers.com) to create media maps of historical sites in and around the Holburne Museum and Sidney Gardens. Using cameras and mobile devices, the students will develop materials that can be used to raise interest in the site among the community.

The challenges that relate to this set of technologies are primarily in the policy arena, and that is why it has been placed on the far horizon.

In fact, the underlying technology that supports the web has all but vanished for most users; all that is necessary is to know which tools to use, and any task

Policy decisions designed to protect students from encountering potentially harmful content also limit access to valuable educational content.

there is little opportunity for students to curate or maintain evolving collections of online material.

As more teachers demonstrate the value of online collaborative environments and communication tools, and as more students create blogs, develop photo and video journals, and participate in social networks, policy may gradually change.

The tools of the personal web are ideal for research and learning.

Rich, personal resource collections can be set up using tags and web feeds

(Indeed, it is a key strategy used in producing this report!)

let authors embed media into their blogs with a single click.

not tied to a particular location or owner

There are cloud-based counterparts to many common software tools from email to word processing and spreadsheets.

Cloud-based applications can provide students and teachers with free or low-cost alternatives to expensive, proprietary productivity tools. Schools are beginning to take advantage of ready-made applications hosted on a dynamic, ever-expanding cloud that enable end users to perform tasks that have traditionally required site licensing, installation, and maintenance of individual software packages. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can all be done inside a web browser, while the software and files are housed in the cloud.

For many institutions, cloud computing offers a cost-effective solution to the problem of how to provide services, data storage, and computing power to a growing number of Internet users without investing capital in physical machines that need to be maintained and upgraded on-site.

The emergence of cloud-based applications is causing a shift in the way we think about how we use software and store our files.

Unlike traditional software packages that can be installed on a local computer and are available as long as the operating system supports them, cloud-based applications are services offered by companies and service providers in real time.

Browser-based applications are accessible for a variety of computer and even mobile platforms, making these tools available anywhere the Internet can be accessed.