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greater challenge, the researchers wrote, is in expanding teachers' knowledge of new instructional practices that will allow them to select and use the right technology, in the right way, with the right students, for the right purpose.

Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization.

experts seem to agree on: so-called "job-embedded" professional development that takes place consistently during the workday

Other districts take a different policy stand. While they also use blocking and filtering that federal law requires, their policy is based on the premise that children need to learn how to be responsible users and that such cannot occur if the young person has no real choice. School personnel who take this stand contend that students need to acquire the skills and dispositions of responsible Internet usage and to be held accountable for their behavior. Moreover, those holding this position contend that restrictive school networks may provide more of an appearance of protection than reality since they can be bypassed by students. Schools with less restrictive environments often distinguish between the restrictiveness appropriate for older and younger students since young children may stumble across sites they ought not visit. 

Policies answer the “what” and “why” questions. Procedures answer the “how,” “who,” and “when” questions.

The students have already changed. The learning trends of 2012 have changed, too. They’re now approaching the trends of 2020, and here we are today curious about what engages students and what their interests are and how they tend to use the tools they love. That’s reactive design

While education struggles to agree on what needs changing and how to make it happen—and why, it should be asked, should we have to agree?—things around us have all exploded, detonated by technology.

"When you talk about the choice between Android and iOS, that's a big decision. But the bigger decision is, 'Are we going to change our whole attitude to how we're delivering the lessons to the students?'"

"If you have a really slow wireless connection, and you're going to have to solely rely on apps, the amount of educational apps available for the iPad far outnumber what's available for Android and the quality of them," Starr said. But if you have a fast connection and want to use online content at no cost, remember that the majority of that content is based on Flash

Net Smart is a book for an era where we’ve moved past just creating online identities and communities, but still have to educate ourselves on how to operate in day-to-day life. Rheingold said he believes a better understanding and deeper use of things like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are “essential survival skills” that will last beyond today or the lifespan of those individual companies.

Rheingold sees as important: attention, participation, collaboration, “crap detection,” and network smarts.

I understand we need to keep kids safe. I think that we would do more good keeping kids safe by teaching them how to use these tools and navigate this online world rather than locking it down and pretending that it is not in our realm.”

Content Curation is an apt term that makes a lot of sense in this era of social networking.

So, what is Content curation? It is a technique of collecting videos, tweets, blogs, images, presentations, slide shows and any other content  from several websites (Internet) and present them all in the same window, categorized or grouped under interesting topics

John Seely Brown on Interest-Driven Learning, Mentors and the Importance of Play

in the past, it was likely to be very hard to find other people around you with your specialized interests. For example, when I was obsessed with building transmitters and radios as a kid, there were maybe five other kids in the entire state of New York who were also designing electronic equipment. I had no cohort group. Today, no matter how specialized a kid’s interest is, he or she will find a cohort group. When my godson was 9, he became fixated on penguins. He went on the internet, and he found himself a group or a collective that was deeply engaged with penguins. I said to him one day, “Well, who is this group?” And he said, “Well, they have a funny name.” And I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Johns Hopkins!” He’d locked into a research group at Johns Hopkins! Yes, as a 9-year-old.

I personally feel that in order to get hooked on something—well, that’s the role of a great teacher, a great mentor. The role of the mentor is to get you to discover things you might not actually know you were interested in, to confront topics you may not be very good at understanding, but once discovered, you will.

competitors will now face a new iteration of the iPad, one that's faster, smaller, and lighter than the model introduced a year ago--all while retaining the $499 entry price that has proven all but impossible for Apple's competitors to match.

company is offering 18 different versions of the iPad 2

original iPad came in six different variations

The design-thinking philosophy requires the designer to put his or her ego to the side and seek to meet the unmet needs, both rational and emotional, of the user,

Once the student designers have gathered all their research together, they must organize and make sense of it all

Finally, design thinking requires designers to generate ideas—lots of ideas—and prototype them

It’s older, more experienced teachers – not younger, so-called digital natives – who are experimenting more with new technology in the classroom, a new report suggests.

the teachers surveyed said the training wheels have to come off the Internet: The filters schools use to block unverified websites prevent students from learning how to exercise good judgment.

“I don’t see a lot of new teachers coming in knowing how to apply technology,

I’m not yet willing to dive educationally into a social tool currently dominated by silliness and pablum.  That said, my argument is not one of a “digital divide” between students and teachers

some folks freak about digital communications between students and teachers.  And yet they think nothing about the face-to-face conversation in the hall where no one else is listening.  This is merely lack of comfort with something new. 

Stand by your interactions as a professional and a model for children, and frankly- there’s a digital record to go along as a bonus.

How do you identify and avoid spreading misinformation, myths, and urban legends on the internet?

employ a healthy level of skepticism for what you're reading, watching, or otherwise consuming—on the internet or elsewhere

Snopes is "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation"—and for the most part, it actually does live up to that goal.

Ideally this would free teachers for more human and emotionally complex interactions, provided strategic adjustments are made.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Honda, Amazon, and well just about every other forward thinking company on earth are scrambling to adjust for a mobile culture that is cloud-based and social. This should affect everything in education, from how learning models and curriculum are designed, to how students interact with one another and their local communities.

Universities are decaying. At least in their current form.

they’re much more likely to say that spending time interacting with each other online has a positive impact on their social-emotional lives than a negative one.

, we found that for all the public attention to the amount of time kids spend with digital media, parents are logging almost as many hours as their kids

Generally speaking, the press coverage of these issues is not well balanced, and the public mostly hears negative and alarming stories about cell phone addiction and cyberbullying and children holed up alone in their rooms.

How do you keep up with all of this?