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Google Specifically for Education From Google Scholar that returns only results from scholarly literature to learning more about computer science, these Google items will help you at school. Google Scholar. Use this specialized Google search to get results from scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, and academic publishers. Use Google Earth’s Sky feature. Take a look at the night sky straight from your computer when you use this feature. Open your browser with iGoogle. Set up an iGoogle page and make it your homepage to have ready access to news stories, your Google calendar, blogs you follow in Google Reader, and much more. Stay current with Google News. Like an electronic clearinghouse for news, Google News brings headlines from news sources around the world to help you stay current without much effort. Create a Google Custom Search Engine. On your own or in collaboration with other students, put together an awesome project like one of the examples provided that can be used by many. Collect research notes with Google Notebook. Use this simple note-taking tool to collect your research for a paper or project. Make a study group with Google Groups. Google Groups allows you to communicate and collaborate in groups, so take this option to set up a study group that doesn’t have to meet face-to-face. Google Code University. Visit this Google site to have access to Creative Commons-licensed content to help you learn more about computer science. Study the oceans with Google Earth 5. Google Earth 5 provides information on the ocean floor and surface with data from marine experts, including shipwrecks in 3D. Learn what experts have to say. Explore Knol to find out what experts have to say on a wide range of topics. If you are an expert, write your own Knol, too.

Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].

In a nutshell, what was happening was that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.

Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.

What's our moral / ethical / professional obligation as school leaders to prepare students for the world as it is and will be, not what was? I think it's pretty high.

You note that students aren't using the technology for anything 'meaningful.' Why would they be? Have their schools, teachers, or parents helped them understand the power of using digital technologies for productive work within the relevant discipline of study? Most have not, instead utilizing technology primarily for replicating factory, rather than information age, models of schooling. Absent productive use and modeling by their instructors and/or parents, of course students are going to use technology primarily for social purposes (just like we adults do).

In my recent experience of integrating technology into my classroom, I’ve found that the mode of communication changes but several elements of classroom do not change.

"Create goals for your blog. It doesn't matter what those goals are, as long as you have them."

One might think that this kind of imaginative play is mildly interesting but essentially frivolous. Not so. Imagination of the kind that starts in childhood is the gateway not just to literature, as Keats discerned, but to adult thinking. In her experiment-based book on how imagination is necessary for creating mental models (including models of how the world might be but is not), Ruth Byrne (2005) has said that rational thought has turned out to be: “more imaginative than cognitive scientists ... supposed,” and that “imaginative thought is more rational than scientists imagined” (xi).

Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to: > 1. Develop proficiency with the tools of technology > 2. Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally > 3. Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes > 4. Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information > 5. Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts > 6. Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

Teachers are hungry to use technology in their classrooms. But they don’t. While part of this lack of usage stems from problems with education reform that emerges from administrators and education boards not fully understanding the technologies themselves, another part of teachers not using technology in the classroom comes from the simple fact that they don’t know how to use the technologies, let alone how to incorporate these technologies into their classrooms. In some cases, the teachers don’t know about the technologies at all.

How in god’s name can we talk seriously about 21st Century skills for kids if we’re not talking 21st Century skills for educators first? (URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First )