NASHUA - Opportunities to engage students through social networking, both inside and outside the classroom, should be encouraged as long as parents are made aware. That's the message of the School District's proposed social media policy, which has not yet been passed but has received support in policy committee meetings this month.

Life stacked the odds firmly against Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt. That didn't stop three Newark, N.J., boys born to broken homes and housing projects from growing up to become doctors. Today, their story becomes the focus of a month-long discussion by students at Central and Logan high schools.

Teaching and Modeling Good Digital Citizenship Teens are savvier than we might give them credit for when it comes to knowing their privacy boundaries on social networking sites. According to a recent Pew Internet study, 62% of teens surveyed said their posts can only be seen by friends, and 19% said that their profile is "partially private so that friends of friends or their networks can see some version of their profile."

Ypsilanti Middle School students will have the option to participate in a more hands-on, project- and technology-based curriculum this fall. YMS will be among the first middle schools in the nation to adopt New Tech Network's national education model, which is the model used at Ypsilanti's New Tech High School at Ardis.

Note by Dola: This is available only to subscribers, but it's free. I regularly attend events through this organization. In this special webinar, brought to you by K12 Inc., Kim McClelland, Assistant Superintendent of Falcon School District 49 in Colorado Springs, will discuss how her district leveraged lessons learned from the implementation of a full-time, online virtual school to address a much broader spectrum of student needs.

K-12 education may be at a pivotal point in its evolution. New approaches to schooling are being tested around the country, technological tools are making it easier to adjust classroom teaching methods to target individual student needs, and an emerging market of educational entrepreneurs is seeking to make money by solving problems. Indeed, the word "innovation" seems to be in everyone's lexicon these days; it's even turning up as part of new education job titles in school districts and states.

Contains some great technology ideas.