Youthlearn News Archive 2004

Best Buy and the Best Buy Children's Foundation are seeking applications from teachers for the second annual "te@ch" program. The program is designed to reward schools for successfully integrating interactive technology into classrooms.

The te@ch program will provide a $2,500 Best Buy Gift Card to schools in recognition of programs or projects that creatively integrate interactive technology into the curriculum.

No textbooks? No problem. A revolutionary new high school outside Tucson, Ariz., plans to do away with the bulky, hardcover tomes in favor of laptop computers, making it one of the first schools in the nation to abandon the use of traditional textbooks for the educational value of the internet."
"When the Vail School District's Empire High School opens its doors a year from now, all of its more than 600 students will receive Apple iBook notebooks equipped with a wireless card for anytime, anywhere web surfing and internet-based instruction on school grounds.

"Back to school for many kids means "back to internet access" in classes where the best of filtering software is not foolproof, particularly against seemingly harmless websites used for invasive marketing... Internet-ready schools generally provide an "acceptable use policy" to parents and students that outlines net etiquette and safeguards against access to inappropriate websites.

Travel back to the 1800s and become an eyewitness to history. . . ."
This website includes a number of resources to help educators engage young people in an exploration of the Underground Railroad. The site was developed by Maryland Public Television through a grant from the Department of Education.

We began this essay with an apparent paradox: Why, given that there are many female and teen bloggers, do public discourses about weblogs focus predominantly on adult males? The observation that men are more likely than women and teens to create filter blogs provides a key: It is filter blogs that are privileged, consistent with the notion that the activities of educated, adult males are viewed by society as more interesting and important than those of other demographic groups.

BUCKHANNON, W.Va. (AP) -- Small, poor and 45 minutes from the nearest town with a shopping mall, West Virginia Wesleyan College couldn't attract enough students to fill its classrooms and improve its struggling finances. To survive and thrive, it needed to stand out. The answer, college leaders decided, was technology.

In the mid-1990s, this school of 1,550 students three hours south of Pittsburgh became one of the first and most aggressive members of the ``ubiquitous computing'' movement on college campuses.

The Christopher Columbus Awards Program challenges teams of students grades 6 to 8, led by an adult coach, to identify a community problem and develop a solution using science and technology. Eight finalist teams win a $200 grant to develop their ideas further and an all-expense-paid trip to National Championship Week at Walt Disney World. Additionally, the two Gold Medal winning teams will receive $2,000 U.S. Savings Bond for each team member and one team will win $25,000 to develop its idea in the community.

RadioShack Corporation, the Fort Worth, Texas-based consumer electronics retailer, is now accepting applications for its Neighborhood Answers Grant program.

Youth Service America and State Farm have partnered to present the State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grant.

We describe a new way of classifying uses of educational technologies, based on a four-part division suggested years ago by John Dewey: inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. This taxonomy is compared to previous taxonomies of educational technologies, and is found to cover a wider range of uses, including many of the cutting-edge uses of educational technologies.