This analysis responds to a generation of criticism leveled at 1:1 laptop computer initiatives. The article presents a review of the key themes of that criticism and offers suggestions for reframing the conversation about 1:1 computing among advocates and critics. Efforts at changing, innovating, and reforming education provide the context for reframing the conversation. Within that context, we raise questions about what classrooms and schools need to look and be like in order to realize the advantages of 1:1 computing. In doing so, we present a theoretical vision for self-organizing schools in which laptop computers or other such devices are essential tools.

Background/Context: Recent trends suggest that middle-class parents may be a growing constituency in urban public schools and districts. Within the burgeoning literature on the middle class in urban public schools, most scholars have focused on parents' goals and orientations and/or the consequences of parental involvement in classroom and school settings. This article broadens the literature's scope through a focus on middle- and upper-middle-class parents' "out-of-school," neighborhood-based engagement. Examining the place-based organizing of a middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhood parents' group, this article highlights the significant influence that parents' work outside classrooms and PTA meetings can have on a local school.

(Re)Constructing Home and School: Immigrant Parents, Agency, and the (Un)Desirability of Bridging Multiple Worlds by Fabienne Doucet - 2011 Background/Context: This study examines the tactics that Haitian immigrant parents used to negotiate the boundaries around home and school, presenting the possibility that families play an active and deliberate role in creating distance between the worlds of home and school.

Teachers know that making lessons relevant helps motivate students. The most frequent approach is to link curriculum to learner interests. Two educators, Mario Fantini and Gerry Weinstein, in two now out-of-print books, Making Urban Schools Work and Towards Humanistic Education, pointed out that it would be more effective to link curriculum to the concerns of learners. (You can find used copies of both through Book Finder.) What do kids worry about? What anxieties sometimes keep them up at night? What peer interactions churn up their emotions? How do they deal with their fears about the future, college admissions, employment or bullying?

"Yet the reaction from most "reformers," especially those with the most money, is to pretty much stay the course, to treat education as something that schools define, deliver, assess and confirm. Technology allows us to do that "better" than we have in the past, in some conversations "better" than teachers can. It allows us to "achieve" at higher levels, to compete more effectively with the world, and to stoke the push to make every child "college ready." This is not "beginner's mind"-type thinking." The Storified link is particularly worth checking out.

Student involvement in school improvement, even strategic planning, is not a high school only proposition. Younger kids can participate as well.

"As school boards address the overall challenge of social media use within schools, they should focus on the reality that the impact no longer lies only on the individual and local schools. Social networks include students and teachers all over the world and, therefore, teaching and coaching on digital literacy for teachers and students is where the focus should rest. Knowing how to build successful communities of learning and how to integrate social connectivity within a learning environment is a much more needed outcome than finding a way to control and monitor specific users and content."

"We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows." Hat tip to Jason Finley:  ttps://groups.diigo.com/group/vermont-education/content/user/jdfinley 

"Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education by Liz Glowa, February 2013 Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education analyzes and examines components and elements of effective competency-based information systems. Based on interviews and research, the ideas in Re-Engineering Information Technology build upon the lessons learned in analyzing information systems developed by competency education innovators, best practices of systemic approaches to information management, and emerging opportunities. The paper is designed for readers to find those issues that are of most interest to them in their role and be used to catalyze strategies, support new competency-based instructional models, and inform decision making for continuous improvement. You can find more resources on the Competency-Based Pathways Wiki."

Making Mastery Work: A Close-Up View of Competency Education highlights the work of ten schools participating in the Proficiency-Based Pathways Project (PBP). 

"The authors highlight the dynamics in which "Teacher leadership provided considerable momentum in the institutionalization of competency education practices.""

The Long Beach, Calif., school district has adopted a training system in which classroom teachers work collaboratively to improve teaching and learning, a shift from outsourcing professional development. 

An effective introduction to the concepts underlying our approach to teacher-directed teacher learning.

A helpful addition to any discussion of the Common Core State Standards.

This video, made for business and industry educators, is interesting in how it raises important critiques of eLearning from the private sector perspective. Those critiques present valid warnings to K-16 eLearning as well.