The names of operating systems and devices have been on the lips of unlikely people lately. In this day and age, superintendents, state commissioners of education, and even state legislators certainly should understand and care about technical details, but the author is just not used to hearing such things from them. The reason for the…

At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, San Diego Unified School District, had 10,000 iPads in use and was set to add 18,000 more the next semester. Teachers and students were enthusiastic about using the devices yet the district faced a serious problem: Teachers were reporting to the instructional tech team that using Apple Configurator and…

Open source software is poised to make a profound impact on K-12 education. For years industry experts have been predicting the widespread adoption of open source tools by K-12 school districts. They're about to be proved right. The impact may not yet have been profound, but it's fair to say that some open source systems and non-proprietary…

Algebra, geometry, earth science, physics--these require patience and perseverance to master. That kind of academic stamina is hard to advertise to kids nurtured on the instant engagement and gratification of modern digital technology. And there's little hope they'll be sustained by an intrinsic interest in math and science; they have to be shown…

The mobile technology market is blooming with powerful applications that have the ability to transform education with the ease of a download to any number of handheld devices. To learn what apps educators are finding most valuable to teaching and learning, presenters from this month's Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) were asked to…

Across the U.S., innovative collaboration practices are happening in the cloud: Sixth-graders participate in literary salons. Fourth-graders mentor kindergarteners. And teachers use virtual Post-it notes to advise students as they create their own television shows. In other words, cloud computing is no longer just used to manage administrative…

In this article, the author talks about the 3D virtual world known as Second Life and its potential as a learning platform. In the last few years, many colleges, universities, and libraries have established resources in what has become the preeminent multiuser virtual environment. Today, more than 100 Second Life "regions" are used for educational…

Biometrics has been making its way into school districts for the past decade. Biometric tools draw information from a person's identifying physical components, providing a virtually fail-safe level of protection for K-12 schools. In addition to their security uses, biometric systems are currently used in schools for cafeteria purchases, library…

In this article, the author features Computers for Youth (CFY), a nonprofit organization that provides computers, software, and training to sixth-grade students and their families at low-income schools. Founded in 1999, Computers for Youth works with low-income schools to put computers in the homes of sixth-grade students and bring parents into…

Assistive technologies are helping students who do not respond to conventional means of instruction. This article presents a glimpse of today's world of assistive technology: hardware, software, and systems for students who can not quite get by with the usual pedagogy. A keyboard that is color-coded and arranged alphabetically. An audio book that…

Hiring substitute teachers used to be an early-morning calling burden for staff members at schools in Oregon's Coos Bay School District. Now that work has been passed off to Aesop, a service from Frontline Placement Technologies, which springs into action upon receiving a notification, either by call or log-in, from a teacher reporting an absence.…

This article describes how the new generation of multifunction printers (MFP) couple diverse software with powerful hardware, bringing a multitude of options to educators. All of the major printer-scanner-copier makers have the education market in their crosshairs, but Lexmark's new Education Station targets K-12 with a unique combination of…

Data integration is one of the single most challenging tasks any district can face. Fortunately for school districts throughout the country with data scattered in disparate systems, an open specification known as the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is mitigating that challenge. SIF has emerged as a cornerstone of K-12 data warehousing,…

A growing number of K-12 districts are taking the open source plunge, both to cope with tight budgets and to escape proprietary vendor lock-in and expensive upgrade cycles. With the potential for cost savings and a growing number of educational applications, open source software is proving to be an effective alternative for schools willing to make…

With test scores dipping, dropout rates spiking, and disciplinary problems multiplying, student motivation was in short supply at Hope High School in East Providence, Rhode Island, when, in 2002, the state commissioner of education stepped in to stop the slide. After months of planning, the state reorganized the school into three smaller,…