An article in last week's Education Week looks at the increasingly common practice of reading aloud to middle and high school students. In discussing the practice with Mary Ann Zehr (I'm quoted briefly in the piece) I made the point that while there is certainly nothing wrong with reading out loud to teenagers, it is symptomatic of what I call "literacy creep" - the tendency of elementary school-style instructional techniques to find their way deeper into K-12 education across all content areas.
Here is an example of a social network in education. I heard it recently called 'network learning.' Ning is the best platform I've found, although the adds can be annoying. (>)_(<)
Interesting that 'death by PowerPoint' is alive and kicking even in the top echelons of society... I agree that PowerPoint can give us a false sense of informational mastery.