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While kids may initially love technology-inspired lessons in schools simply because they are different from the paper-driven work that tends to define traditional classrooms, the novelty of new tools wears off a lot quicker than digital cheerleaders like to admit.

What students are really motivated by are opportunities to be social — to interact around challenging concepts in powerful conversations with their peers.

Technology’s role in today’s classroom, then, isn’t to motivate. It’s to give students opportunities to efficiently and effectively participate in motivating activities built around the individuals and ideas that matter to them.

digital portfolios could be used as a “parking lot”

And here’s the thing: He wrote that at the age of 14, in his spare time, at a point when the longest assignment he ever had in school was maybe 500 to 1,000 words. What motivated him? Other gamers. He had written a little bit of the guide and put it online – when he started getting e-mails saying how much other players liked it, were using it and asking when he was going to complete it.

Part of what makes the online environment so powerful, as Prof. Lunsford says, is that it provides a sense of purpose: “[Students are] writing things that have an impact on the world – that other people are reading and responding to.