SmartWired has launched Dweeber, a social networking site for student homework collaboration. The site, which is being beta tested, allows students to solve problems together, participate in virtual study sessions, and communicate with friends. A collaborative whiteboard can be used to solve math and science problems or to create joint drawings and diagrams. Registered users can create a profile in order to discover how they learn best and then apply this knowledge to improve their schoolwork. Dweeber is targeted towards students aged 13 and up and is free-of-charge.

Mari Anne Fell is an Elementary Education senior at Southern Miss.  She is getting valuable on-the-job experience as a teacher’s assistant.

“I’m able to work full time and go to college, and to able to get hands-on experience to see if this is truly what I want to do with my life,” Fell said.

While Fell is practicing her teaching skills at Jackson Elementary School in Pascagoula, miles away, her professors are watching her every move at their office at the USM Teaching Site in Gautier.

Using a web cam connected to a laptop computer, and a SKYPE video conferencing account, the assistant professors can observe and evaluate Fell and 17 other online Elementary Education students who are working in the field.

“We started the program because we saw a need,” said Assistant Professor Dr. Kelley Samblis.  “There were a lot of teacher’s assistants that were not able to come to school, come to face-to-face classes.  So we thought, let’s offer an online venue for them.”

The assistant professors can communicate with their students through a Bluetooth ear piece and give them instant feedback.

Oprah Winfrey granted pop superstardom in April not to another fraudulent memoirist, but to Twitter, the online social network that has lured both Hollywood celebrities and basement amateurs away from their blogs.

To the Internet hipsters who discovered Twitter in 2006, Oprah’s inaugural tweet — FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY, she typed — was the end of the era, the shark jump. But that’s like saying the Beatles were over after they appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Twittermania has only begun. In the days after Oprah’s show, Twitter’s traffic growth is accelerating. The ratings service HitWise now ranks twitter.com as America’s No. 38 Web site. It’s about to rocket past CNN and Wells Fargo.

Because it’s kept simple, most users figure out Twitter quickly. If you began tweeting the day of Oprah’s show, it’s a safe bet you already know how to DM a private message to a friend, and how to R.T. a joke worth retweeting. You search for #swineflu every few hours, and know it’s called a hashtag. You’ve learned how to follow Demi Moore and block online marketers.

Assuming you’ve got these basics down, there are many less obvious tips and tweaks to get more from tweeting.

Two new virtual academies are launching in California, both providing tuition-free online education for middle school and high school students.

The new academies–Kaplan Academy of California, San Diego and Kaplan Academy of California, Central–will provide one to one instruction with state-certified teachers, according to California Virtual Education Partners, a non-profit organization that is partnering with Kaplan Virtual Education to launch the academies. The programs will, according to the companies, provide a full range of courses, including AP and honors courses. Computers can be supplied to students who need them for as long as they are enrolled, and the academies can will help cover the costs of Internet access for students who need it.

The ongoing debate on the effectiveness of technology use for student learning outcomes still seems to have no clear answers. Recently, some institutions have decided to end their laptop programs for students because of the economic challenges facing those institutions. But there is no consistent response as to the effect on students. Some say it has been highly effective for students, and others say that it has not had any significant impact in how students learn.

What is interesting is that there is also no real agreement as to what should be measured or even whether it can be measured in order to quantify success in this regard. Institutions–whether K-12 or higher education–that have adopted technology for instruction often have little or no systematic methodology in place for instructional technology use or how its success can or should be measured. Rather, the technology use has typically relied upon individual teachers and faculty who have given up time to learn and use new technology and who are always underfunded and unable, as a result, to expand their use to other programs and other instructors for ongoing research.

So technology use remains conflicted between the generalized rollout of hardware and software and the individualized adoption for instruction. What then can be done to truly assess benefits to learning in regards to technology use?

This year, students at Benjamin Franklin School have visited the North Pole, learned aboriginal dances in Australia and met with NASA scientists — all without leaving Uniontown.

Though the budget rarely allows for field trips these days, students in the Fayette County school have traveled the world through video conferencing.

“The funding is not there for multiple field trips,” said Mary Wallace, who began using the technology in her third-grade classroom last year and expanded it to the entire school this year. “This totally breaks down the barriers of where we can go.” As recession-strapped school districts trim their budgets, virtual field trips are becoming more and more popular. While a traditional field trip might include transportation costs, tickets and a day of lost class time, virtual field trips are inexpensive after the initial investment in cameras, microphones and computer hardware.

Would you be surprised to be told that nerdy war-gamers may embody traits that are prized by organizations seeking innovation? Would you accept the premise that teaming up with people you’ve never met to defeat a tribe of virtual elves breeds collaborative learning?

The vexing challenge of promoting innovation among employees appears to be getting a boost from massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs, as they are known. In contrast to traditional training, which tends to focus on transferring existing knowledge rather than creating new knowledge, many fantasy games, such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and Everquest, are designed to foster and reward new thinking.

Companies attempting to drive innovation, with its emphasis on breaking the frames around fixed thinking, have tried many kinds of environments to promote new mindsets, from greenfield sites to skunkworks. Michael Schrage, author of Serious Play: How the Best Companies Simulate to Innovate, writes about a “third place” where co-creative activity leads to innovation. Online role-playing games are such a place.

What motivates a growing number of virtual-school students to forgo the traditional school structure and take their classes entirely online?

At the Virtual School Symposium hosted in mid-October in Phoenix by the North American Council for Online Learning, virtual-school students explained they like being able to progress at their own pace–and some said they appreciate being able to take classes not offered by their traditional, bricks-and-mortar school.

Roger Sanchez said he left his conventional California school because he wanted to study at his own pace while holding a job outside of school and focusing his attention on out-of-school topics that related to his college interests.

“I was looking for something different to fit my schedule, and the traditional system wasn’t making the cut,” said Sanchez, who is taking multiple Advanced Placement courses and plans to study computer science or graphic design in college.

To his frustration, Steven Schwartz often encounters patients who have no idea what each of the pills they’ve been popping is called.

“But usually they can tell you what it looks like,” the Georgetown University Medical Center family practitioner said. “They might say it’s a blue, triangular pill for hypertension.”

Armed with an iPhone, Schwartz is able to play detective.

He uses an application called Epocrates to input pill characteristics, such as color, shape and clarity. The software replies with a list of medications and images that match those criteria, allowing him to deduce what the patient is taking.

Schwartz says his iPhone has become indispensable: He uses it to pull up instructional diagrams and videos for patients, write electronic prescriptions and check basic information, with the patient beside him.

In the old days, college students might turn to classmates for help during all-night cram sessions before final exams. Now their study buddies are just as likely to be commercial Web sites with step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, copies of previous exams, reams of lecture notes, summaries of literary classics, and real-time help with physics, math and computer science problems.

“It’s a backup,” said Chris O’Connor, a pre-med sophomore at Columbia University who relies on a popular site, Cramster, to unravel the mysteries of complex math and science problems. “Many professors who return homework won’t tell you how you got it wrong — just that it’s wrong. This way you can complete the feedback process, which is essential to learning.”

But as companies with playful names like Cramster, Course Hero, Koofers and SparkNotes are transforming the way undergraduates like Mr. O’Connor study, some professors and ethicists are questioning whether such Web sites encourage cheating and undermine the mental sweat equity of day-to-day learning by seducing students with ready-made solutions and essays.