Many educators and authors are anxious to see if Apple’s new iBook2 will be the technology that revolutionizes the way a new generation learns. The iBook2 is a free app for the iPad that allows anyone to author a textbook and hopes to make textbooks more available to students with the maximum textbook price set at $14.99.
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Could getting students out of high school earlier be beneficial to higher education and to the students themselves? More and more states think the answer is yes. An increasing number of states are encouraging students to take college courses or graduate early in hopes to bypass the senior slump, save families college tuition money, and curb the school districts’ instructional costs, according the the article “Some States Prodding Students to Graduate Early.“
Dropping out of high school doesn’t only effect the individual. While students who drop out of high school will personally have less chances of employment, make lower incomes, and are most likely just a piece in the poverty cycle, they also represent a huge drain on our economic potential. On a larger scale, high school graduates and dropouts shape our economy, define the abilities of our workforce, and set the stage for our leaders of the future in business, industry, and government.
Advances in technology have always come at the price of taking jobs, and we can expect them to continue taking even more. “As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars,” writes Thomas Friedman in his article “Average Is Over.”
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Yesterday, I wrote on finding a balance between digital and traditional teaching. There were also two articles I came across touching on the same subject, one debating whether handwriting is still a necessary skill to teach in the 21st century classroom, and the other debating whether blogging should replace writing a formal research paper.
As more schools embrace technology, many are experimenting with finding the balance between digital and traditional instruction. A group of charter schools in the Bay Area, Rocketship Education, requires two 50-minute technology sessions daily for all students, known as the Learning Lab. In the Learning Lab, students complete exercises in math and reading that are similar to “short video games,” according to the article “Combing Computer Games with Classroom Teaching.”
Many homes are plugged into at least one form of media. Television is still the number one form of media consumption for families, but many also have computers and portable devices. Parents often worry that kids are too plugged in due to their daily rituals of using iPods, cellphones, and the Internet — sometimes all at the same time.
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Today, Apple unveiled the latest apps for iPads that hope to revolutionize the textbook. One app, iBook Author, will allow authors to create and publish textbooks on an iPad, the other app, iBooks 2, will allow students to access their textbook on their iPad, as well as take notes, view 3D models, videos, and images, make flashcards, and look up words in the dictionary, according to The Huffington Post.
The economy has done more than take away jobs. It’s forced families from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds to be homeless, hungry, and lose the comfort of  having other basic needs. Nearly three-quarters of all U.S. households with income below the federal poverty line spend over 50 percent of monthly household income on rent (Endhomelessness.org.)
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Many parents and educators equate a student’s high self-esteem with high achievement. However, according in the article “In schools, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, finer-tuned praise,” empty praise is out, and a new vocabulary that supports challenge is in. So, how can we work with students to hold them accountable to high expectations while helping them to believe in themselves to risk, to try, to grow, and to deliver quality work?
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