"The School 2.0 eToolkit is designed to help schools, districts and communities develop a common education vision for the future and to explore how that vision can be supported by technology."
The site contains a range of resources including the Learning Ecosystem Map that is accessible in both an interactive form as well as a poster. The map is a work in progress that you can create an account to add to. The site also has a range of other tool and toolkits that school administrators and technology and other co-ordinators can use to develop their own understanding of School 2.0.
This is a search engine based on sites that are considered to be exemplary in the field of educational technology. This search engine will search the entire web, but will emphasize the included sites.
"While attending this particular workshop I was, at first, contemplating how I could utilize this tool as an administrator. As those thoughts wandered, the instructor repeatedly said the words "expand the walls of the classroom". That caught my attention and then I had no problem envisioning how the teachers I worked with could utilize a wiki to do just that."
The two major obstacles that students say they face at school: filters that stop them from accessing the websites they need for homework and bans on using their own mobile devices (namely cellphones) at school.
The majority of parents surveyed - 67% - said that they were willing to buy their children a mobile device for school if the schools allowed it, and parents seemed particularly interested in their children using these devices in order to access online textbooks.
there were some interesting differences between what digital skills teachers thought were important and what skills students thought they needed to know.
"We don't often stop and ask students - or their parents - what they think their technology needs are. But the newly-released Speak Up 2010 survey has done just that .. The results are pretty fascinating, as they show great adoption of technology among even very young students, but lingering resistance on the part of school administrators to sanction some of those tools into the classroom."
With access issues in mind, allowing students to bring their own devices from home can offer educational benefits, as well as some surprisingly positive results when it comes to creative thinking and classroom behavior.
"Mobile devices are now found in the hands of most children, and school leaders are using that to their advantage by incorporating devices that students already own into classroom lessons and projects."