It’s an exciting time for education technology.

Every day we hear about school districts and universities eagerly exploring and creating technological resources that facilitate learning and improve performance. That’s the hope anyway.

But I’ve got to wonder: Are we using our new technology to do the same old things?

While reading through a university-level textbook the other day, I decided to check out its companion website. My browsing revealed practice quizzes, flash cards and games based on the text. Helpful? Perhaps to someone. But aren’t these online resources simply repackaging content that could easily be delivered in a low tech way?

Of course, many education technologies go well beyond repackaging the same old content. These leaders excel at introducing new formats and helpful functionality. Wikis allow students to collaborate in a way that would be difficult with a pen and paper. Smartboards integrate resources in a way regular whiteboards can’t.

But even these popular technology solutions won’t improve student performance unless they are oriented around proper learning goals. Like all learning tools, educational technologies must engage students’ curiosity, develop critical thinking skills, encourage good questions and cultivate effective communication proficiency.

Too many “innovative” technology solutions seem content finding interesting ways to teach students to memorize and parrot information.

As Harvard’s Tony Wagner says, you can have all the equipment and technology you want, but “if you don’t teach kids how to think, how to think beyond multiple choice, you’ve got a problem.”

Technology, by itself, cannot reform education. But, as we seek better ways to teach our students how to think and communicate effectively, technology may prove to be our greatest ally.

Yeah, you heard me. I don’t mean something corny like sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya, My Lord. Instead, I mean giving your team a way to interact regarding everything that is valuable to them — not just work. It’s all about building a team environment that makes people want to interact with eachother. Think about it: you spend a month hiring the perfect person to fit in your team, so why not facilitate the exchange of music between the people that you think are so perfectly fitted to each other? The good thing news is that there is a great site that allows you to do exactly that, with a little finesse. And now, I introduce you to Blip.

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Is anyone else annoyed by the ostentatious graphics on the news?

Election night was the worst. In an effort to be super-informative, most networks succeeded only in assaulting my eyes with distracting, overbearing graphics for three hours.

The result? I actually watched Katie Couric on election night.

Now, I’m no Katie Couric fan, but I’ve got to say that CBS sported the least annoying graphics of the night. In fact, they were downright classy.

Take a look:

Even when they predictably used the huge touchscreen, it wasn’t shoving the technology in my face.

And, for the most part, their charts were minimalist and clean. They avoided the bright, “PowerPoint 95″ color scheme. And they didn’t have 18 graphs on the screen at one time.

Compare this to NBC:

Normally, I like NBC’s look. But, wow, what was going on tonight?

What was the deal with the virtual hologram images in the horribly rendered pillar-room? It made me feel like I was in a bad role playing game.

Last, let’s look at Fox:

Well, Fox is Fox. Still using five different fonts per screen.

I just don’t get why networks think that an excess of brightly colored charts is a good thing. For me, visual aids count for a lot, especially for something as important as the news. Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better…

The internet provides a wealth of tools for analyzing today’s election. Some of my favorites:

Check out Twitter’s Election 08 page for a live feed of election related tweets. For information how on voting experiences went go to search.twitter.com and search for #votereport.

Check out Digg’s Digg the Candidates for news stories related to the candidates voted on by the digg social network. Tends to be liberally biased, but as long as you stay away from the comments you’ll survive.

For an awesome mashup of the two check out CurrentTV’s Election Night Party. They will be displaying live feeds from both digg and twitter over their election coverage. (If CurrentTV is not available in your area you can normally watch it online, I’m not really sure if that’ll work tonight though.)

And last but not least:

CNN’s Electoral Vote Calculator which lets you chose the winners of states and plan your candidate’s path to victory! Well, not necessarily to victory but you do get a chance to play out different scenarios if you can’t wait until the polls close.

With all this who needs political analysts any more?