At best, insurance is a crucial investment that leads to peace of mind after large educational technology expenditures. If something goes wrong, the insurer pays the claim. At worst, insurance premiums siphon money from school budgets while lining the pockets of distant company executives. John Connolly, director of technology at Consolidated High…

Even though non-print-based learning objects have been in the classroom for years, the shift to digital content has gotten more attention lately. One development that has made the difference is the Apple initiative to introduce its iBooks textbooks for iPads, generating a notable amount of buzz. That and President Obama's announcement that he…

When it comes to implementing innovative classroom technology programs, urban school districts face significant challenges stemming from their big-city status. These range from large bureaucracies, to scalability, to how to meet the needs of a more diverse group of students. Because of their size, urban districts tend to have greater distance…

The new faces on the help desk are younger, work for cheap, and may be the tech savviest in the building. This article describes how two IT training programs are teaching students valuable technology skills while providing schools with a much-needed lift to their troubleshooting teams. The programs--Generation YES and Mouse Squad--put students at…

Three years ago, when K-12 schools started thinking seriously about creating digital libraries, the Mesquite Independent School District (TX) bought several Sony eReaders, loaded them with books, and circulated them to students. This initial attempt was not a rousing success. After the Mesquite ISD pulled the plug on its disastrous e-reader…

For the Garland Independent School District, a tournament was the tipping point. With too many of its students failing the math portion of state-mandated exams and in danger of being held back, the suburban Dallas district was determined to raise scores. The students lacked motivation, and Garland was seeking a better method of engaging them.…

The first five articles of this series on technologies that enable collaboration, highlighted ways to foster shared learning experiences among students. For this, the final installment, focus is shifted to teachers. States, districts, and groups of teachers are enhancing their collaboration opportunities through synchronous online meetings and…

Fourth-grader Nicholas is a homebound cancer patient who attends Plainview Elementary School in rural Chesterfield County, South Carolina. This year he was provided a laptop and webcam as part of Chesterfield County School District's Student Technology and Education Proficiency (STEP) initiative. Prior to the implementation of the STEP program in…

Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and Comal Independent School District (ISD) in New Braunfels, Texas, are pioneers in the incorporation of mobile devices such as the iPad and iPod Touch in the English language learner (ELL) classroom. Though it's too soon to collect significant quantitative data regarding the…

Information technology (IT) departments are ruled by a kind of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: The big-tech stuff--the operating systems, the networks, the data centers--gets the priority, food-and-shelter attention, while upgrading the backup power supplies, evaluating new projector mounts, and taming that rat's nest of classroom cords fall…

This article discusses how craft innovative architecture is bringing form to the function of 21st-century learning. It describes the construction of New Tech High at Coppell, in Coppell, Texas, which produces an example of how workplace design principles can be coordinated with modern educational goals. The campus was built on the model of New…

Engagement is crucial for 21st-century students, and nowhere more so than at the middle school level. Middle school is a time of transitions for students--from a single, self-contained classroom with one teacher who knows every student well, to six or even eight classrooms in which teachers see more than 100 students every day; from a pedagogy…

From her first encounter with stereoscopic 3D technology designed for classroom instruction, Megan Timme, principal at Hamilton Park Pacesetter Magnet School in Dallas, sensed it could be transformative. Last spring, when she began pilot-testing 3D content in her third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, Timme wasn't disappointed. Students…

When Texas' Technology Immersion Project began in the spring of 2004, a grant from the US Department of Education allowed a parallel project to launch--eTxTIP--to evaluate and measure the success of the program, which equips middle school students in high-risk, high-need areas with laptops. Data is beginning to come in on several of the first…

When the author and his colleagues last left Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Texas' Plano Independent School District in April 2008, both school districts were immersed in the long and labored advance toward becoming a fully matured data-driven operation, one that uses sophisticated technologies to gather data, sort and interpret it, and…