Future car

This is the new Mercedes Benz SCL600.

This car is really different!

No steering wheel, you drive it with a joystick. No pedals either. Can you drive with a joystick? Your kids and grand kids probably can. The influence of video games in our lives has really arrived, wouldn't you say?

SCARY THOUGHT THAT NOW A 7 YEAR OLD COULD STEAL YOUR CAR AND PROBABLY DRIVE IT BETTER THAN YOU.

Seven Brilliant Things Teachers Do With Technology

by Doug Johnson

Here are seven technology practices that just make me marvel and feel proud to be part of the profession:

1. Empower kids with technology. Technology is an amplifier of natural abilities. Brilliant teachers see that good writers become better writers, good debaters become better debaters, good French speakers become better French speakers, good mathematical problem-solvers become better mathematical problem-solvers, and so on, by helping their students harness technology. They do not see technology as a crutch, but as a propellant. Brilliant teachers have experienced the empowering power of technology themselves. Brilliant teachers use good assessment strategies to rigorously determine the quality of technology-enhanced projects.

2. Creatively find and use resources. I can't believe the technology found in some of our teachers' classrooms. And it was neither provided by our department nor stolen (I don't think). Through personal purchase, through parent-teacher groups, through grants, through business partnerships, through parental contacts, through fund raising, and through classroom supply budgets, brilliant teachers amazingly amass digital cameras and clickers and sensors and classroom computer labs. One of our brilliant teachers MacGyver-ed his own document camera out of an old camcorder, plastic pipe, and duct tape. He calls it his Grover (not his Elmo).

3. Make conferencing real-time. Brilliant teachers don't wait until scheduled parent conferences to communicate with homes. Through e-mail, Web sites, online grade books, blogs, wikis, and, yes, even telephone calls, technology gives teachers the ability to make parents partners who help assure students' timely, quality work. They post newsletters, spelling lists, assessment tools, assignments, grades, calendars, discussion lists, and tips. They read and respond to parent e-mails. Most parents want to be involved, but they like knowing how.

4. Put kids in touch with the world. The classrooms of brilliant teachers have no walls. Those teachers "get" the flat world challenge, understanding that tomorrow's citizens and workers will have an advantage if they can work successfully with other cultures.

5. Accept the role of co-leaner. One of the best signs of intelligent people is that they tend to willingly admit when they don't know something. Brilliant teachers not only accept the dismal fact that they will never know all there is to know about technology, they also turn that condition into a classroom advantage by having their brilliant children teach them how to do something techie now and then.

6. Use the kids’ own devices to teach them. Brilliant teachers understand the old Arab proverb, "It's easier to steer the camel in the direction it is already heading." Students are increasingly and unstoppably bringing in personal communication devices -- cell phones, cameras, game devices, iPods/mp3 players, netbooks, laptops, and PDAs. Brilliant teachers know how to use cell phones to poll their classes; create podcasts of lectures for later review; use games to teach difficult concepts; and make "Google-jockeys" of student wireless laptop users.

7. Delight in the discovery, the newness, and the fun technology holds. It's not about technology; it's about finding out and doing "cool" things. We knew that ourselves as kids. Brilliant tech-using teachers have never lost the thrill of doing something new and interesting with these electronic Tinker Toys. They are pleased with their tech-using students and pleased with themselves. Brilliant teachers use technology's engagement (not entertainment) power. Technology is not "just one more thing," it’st a vital experience that brings discovery, excitement, and even fun to the classroom.

Technology won’t make a poor teacher a good one. But it can make a good teacher even better. And it can help make great teachers the ones that students remember for the rest of their lives. I hope you all know teachers who make brilliant uses of technology. What do you see them doing?

Random family images

Born with a mouse in her hand. Kids today have grown up with technology. To them it is a natural part of life and often they perform tasks automatically. Plus, they see us use it and learn by mirroring our actions. In everything. Until they make up their own minds.

More bang for your technology buck

How some school CIOs are wringing more efficiency from technology solutions

Across the country, school technology chiefs face a difficult challenge: Confronted with the reality of shrinking federal budgets and growing technology demands, they must do more with fewer resources at their disposal.
Though few people today dispute the notion that technology, when deployed effectively, can have a profound effect on learning, many districts still struggle to provide regular access to classroom computers for all students. And yet, by taking innovative approaches to their deployment of computers, some districts have achieved remarkable success. In South Carolina's Orangeburg Consolidated School District 4, for example, district officials have leveraged the processing power of 250 existing computers to create 750 additional student workstations--at a cost of only $250 per seat.
Ohio's Green Local School District reportedly saved about $135,000 in hardware expenses when it recently added some 300 new computer terminals. And administrators at Pennsylvania's Woodland Hills School District say they saved $460,000 when they replaced half the district's aging fleet of computers just a few years ago.
Even more remarkable than these substantial savings in hardware costs is the ease of deployment and maintenance that each district reports from its solution, which could result in significant cost savings over time. How did each school system achieve these results? Read on to find out.
Cutting costs
Randy Johnson is the director of technology for Orangeburg School District 4. Tired of constantly trying to squeeze extra years out of an already overextended crop of school computers, he agreed to test a system from California-based startup NComputing Co. last year.
NComputing aims to deliver high-end computing to more users at a fraction of the cost of buying traditional PCs, by turning a single computer into a shared network of several machines. Each additional user shares the central processing unit (CPU) and memory of the host computer. Depending on the configuration they choose, schools can support up to 30 students on a single host computer, the company says. "To be frank, I was sceptical at first about how well the product would work," said Johnson. But the system worked better than he anticipated. After a brief trial period, Johnson purchased enough of the devices for him to turn 250 desktops into 1,000 fully functional workstations.
NComputing was started by former eMachines founder and CEO Stephen Dukker. After spending most of his career developing low-cost personal computers through his eMachines brand, Dukker sold the company to Gateway Inc. and decided instead to move in another direction--a direction he believes "will revolutionize the way [schools] use computers."
Dukker's idea was to develop a chip that taps into the unused or dormant processing power on an existing CPU. Not unlike the human brain, Dukker says, most personal computers employ only a very small portion of their overall processing power when in use. Rather than increase production costs by purchasing expensive processors from leading chip makers such as Intel and AMD, he said, the company found it could reduce its costs to users dramatically by designing a device that simply borrowed its processing power from existing PCs

A Proposal for Banning Pencils

By Doug Johnson
When it comes to "technology" use in schools, every responsible educator's first concerns should be student safety and educational suitability. I am suggesting that we ban one of the most potentially harmful technologies of all -- the pencil. We must eliminate them from schools because:
A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
A student might write a dirty word or, worse yet, a threatening note to another student, with a pencil.
One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
The pencil might get stolen.
Pencils break and need repairing all the time.
Kids who have pencils might doodle instead of working on their assignments or listening to the teacher.
Oh, sure, kids might actually use a pencil to take notes or compose a paper -- but really, what's the chance of that?
Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it? But listen to the reasons teachers and administrators on our district technology committee gave for banning iPods and MP3 players from the classroom:
They might get stolen.
They make kids who can't afford them feel bad.
Kids might listen to them instead of to the teacher.
Who knows what kinds of lyrics the kids might be listening to?
Kids might listen to test answers.
Oh, sure, kids might actually use them to study, to replay their French vocabulary lesson, or to listen to audio books, an NPR broadcast, or a teacher-created lecture -- but really, what's the chance of that?
I cringe whenever I hear a school "banning" cell phones, student blogs, e-mail, flash drives, chat, personally owned laptops, or game sites. Student access to the Internet itself was hotly debated in the mid-90s. Each of those technologies can and does have positive educational uses. Each of those technologies is a big part of many kids' lives outside of school. And yes, each of these technologies has the potential for misuse.
One of my biggest worries has always been that by denying access in school to technologies that students find useful and meaningful, we make school more and more irrelevant to our "Net Genners." When are we going to learn to use the kids' devices for their benefit rather than invent excuses to outlaw them? My experience is that the more familiar educators are with a new technology, the less likely they are to restrict its use by students. When we old-timers experience a technology's benefit ourselves, the more we understand its benefit to students.
Is an iPod on your holiday wish list?
Add it -- for your students' sake.