Helping kids find their passion outside the confines of standardized curriculum and testing can be a messy endeavor, but worth the challenge. Marc Prensky, author of "BRAIN GAIN: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom," said that, rather than finding different ways for everyone to do the same curriculum, educators need to allow individual…

More districts realize that communicating in a clear and engaging way with stakeholders about everything from the district's overall education vision to scholastic and extracurricular success stories can go a long way toward enlisting broad community support. And although face-to-face communications are still important, technology provides a…

Most faculty are thoughtful, innovative, open to new ideas--except when it comes to changing their teaching methods. Many merely mimic their teachers for years on end. Some even use old college notes to teach their classes throughout their careers. There are exceptions but they are just that--exceptions. Single one-way oral communication still…

Generation Y teachers--those under 30 years of age--have higher expectations for technology than their colleagues from earlier generations--for good reason. Improved instructional and networking technology is one important aspect of a modern high-performing workplace. This generational difference is important, since a majority of seasoned…

Busy educators who want to ask advice, offer opinions, and engage in discussions with colleagues increasingly turn to professional learning networks (PLNs)--online communities that allow the sharing of lesson plans, teaching strategies, and student work, as well as collaboration across grade levels and departments. As budget cuts limit…

It isn't a stretch to say that the definitions of "teaching online" and "teaching with technology" vary, even from instructor to instructor. Whatever the level of technology, and regardless of teachers' comfort level with it, one has to remember that for all that educational technology can offer through new communication methods and the ability to…

Of all the recent budget cuts made by the Eagle County, Colorado, school district, none sparked as much anger or faced the same scrutiny as the decision to cut three foreign-language teaching positions and replace them with online instruction. At a spring school board meeting, supporters of the targeted programs in French and German, as well as…

The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California surveys 2,000 households each year to find out how online technology affects Internet users. Findings in the latest report show social networks are increasing and a majority of users report feeling as strongly about their communities online as their real-world communities.…

Not long ago, television sets in classrooms were a novel idea and most professors could remember the days of slide rules, mimeograph machines, and manual typewriters. Now, even DVD players can seem quaint. But education has been altered by the breathtakingly rapid technological advancements of the last 10 years, and just like the rest of the…

Until this year, the Oregon Department of Education ran a central portal of thousands of learning resources that required all teachers and students to have an email address as authentication for security purposes. Because many districts didn't offer student email, the learning materials were not available to everyone. In April, Oregon became the…

Textbooks are resources for learning that provide the structure, content, assessments, and teacher guidance for an entire course. Technology can provide a far better resource that provides the same functions, but takes full advantage of computers. This resource would be much more than text on a screen. It would use the best technology; it would be…

The teaching profession has long been thought of as recession proof. Indeed, that may have been one of the reasons why teachers took far lower starting salaries right out of college. Perhaps the greatest common feature of teachers, besides their desire to serve society in a humanitarian way, may be the lack of risk-taking the occupation previously…

Students now routinely use computers to search the Internet, write reports, design presentations, crunch numbers, and make spreadsheets. The thing is, much of what they know and understand about computers and technology is most likely stuff they didn't learn in school. In this article, the author discusses how a San Diego school district is…

Many teenagers are more skilled in using tools of technology for learning than the adults who guide their education. The Center for a Digital Future at the University of Southern California administers annual surveys to track the impact of online technology. Jeffrey Cole, center director, reports that adolescents consider the Internet to be their…

As most educators know, there is a lot more to addressing the so-called "digital divide" than having enough working machines in classrooms. Effective information technology (IT) in schools requires useful software, reliable and speedy Internet access, effective teacher training, and well-considered goals with transformative outcomes. Educators who…