Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.  “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,” said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”  But even as some parents and educators express unease about students’ digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory.  The article is in The New York Times.

More than a half-million students are using clickers this fall on several thousand college campuses, and the greatest impact may be cultural. These hand-held devices have altered, perhaps irrevocably, the nap schedules of anyone who might have hoped to catch a few winks in the back row, and made it harder for them to respond to text messages, e-mail and other distractions. In some classes, barely 15 minutes pass without the professor asking students to “grab your clickers” to provide feedback. Though the technology is relatively new, preliminary studies at Harvard and Ohio State, among other institutions, suggest that engaging students in class through a device as familiar to them as a cellphone — there are even applications that convert iPads and BlackBerrys into class-ready clickers — increases their understanding of material that may otherwise be conveyed in traditional lectures. This article is in The New York Times.

Amid all the clamour and cry about this week’s Race to the Top Grants – who deserved it but didn’t receive, who seized it but shouldn’t have  –the considerable question to seek now is   how all of this will change the experience of kids in the classroom?

Every state that applied collaboratively did a fairly good job in creating an all-inclusive education reform agenda. The Department plans to bring all States together to help ensure the success of their work in implementing reforms around key areas as adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and in career, creating pipelines and incentives to put the most effective teachers in high-need schools, great teachers & leaders, school  turnarounds and more and more data systems. All in all, this aims to  shape up the educational landscape with more scrutiny on teacher’s performance, more uniform curriculum, more experimentation and more decisions based on data.

On the Contrary, many Education professors say that the concept deflates and minimizes innovation and learning at the expense of increasing scores on standardized tests. Tying the scores to teacher accountability will lead more to test drilling than to an overall, well rounded education for students. The states want money and will do whatever it takes to be in on the cash handouts. Can knowledge enlightenment thus be based on testing.