Morning Announcements: May 2, 2012

Technology is the topic of the day with so much of the day’s education reporting focusing on the impact of digital innovation in the classroom. Happy Wednesday, as you engage in digital learning by reading this from your smart phone, tablet, or computer, embrace some of the latest headlines.

From the Washington Post, Montgomery County middle school teacher Amy Soldavini recently borrowed an online lesson comparing hip-hop artists to the Bard. Math teachers at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County sometimes assign students to watch free instructional Web videos at home so they can solve more challenging problems in class. Free online digital textbooks are providing a new competition for traditional textbook retailers.

According to the New York Times, new rules on social media may limit student-teacher contact. The guidelines reflect concerns about the misuse of sites like Facebook and Twitter and represent the latest official response to allegations of teachers behaving inappropriately with students.

At the dawn of the Internet era, Congress set out to avert a digital divide between rich and poor students. In a landmark bill, lawmakers required the nation's phone companies to provide bargain voice and data rates to schools and to subsidize the cost of equipment and services, with the biggest subsidies going to the schools with the most disadvantaged children. But as ProPublica reports, many of those telecommunications providers are not adhering to this requirement.

From GothamSchools, a chart from the New York City Justice Department's lawsuit against Princeton Review shows how many times the company billed the city for tutoring students who were absent or when school was closed — and how much it was paid.