Every so often, members of the Thornburg Center create executive briefings on a variety of topics.  These briefings often summarize our thinking on educational technology, with special focus on the challenges and opportunities surrounding today's educational tools.  These documents are published in the form of pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files you are free to share with others in their entirety.  There is never a charge for these reports.

If you find one of the topics particularly compelling, please contact us to see how a personal appearance from us could expand and extend the message to those who might benefit from it most.

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Briefings:

• The Four Pillars Revisited: Rekingling an American Dream, David Thornburg shows how little progress has been made in the past fourteen years in bringing technological tools to every child..
• Why STEM Topics are Interrelated: The Importance of Interdisciplinary Studies in K-12 Education, David Thornburg, provides rationale for treating STEM subjects in an integrated fashion.
• Type to Learn: A New Look @ Research-Based Keyboarding Instruction, Leigh Zeitz, explores research base of data on the benefit of developing keyboarding skills in children.
• Is There Enough Sugar in Your Educational Technology Diet?, David Thornburg, provides background on the Sugar user interface for children developed for the OLPC, but capable of being used on all computers (January, 2008).
• Using the Playstation Portable as a Presentation Tool: The Easy Way, David Thornburg, details a simple way to port computer-based presentations to the new PlayStation Portable (November, 2007).
  
• Computers and the Core Curriculum, David Thornburg, details a category of software that may appear to be supplemental, but is actually designed for daily use by science teachers at multiple grade levels (October, 2007)
• Open Source: The Path to Ubiquity, David Thornburg, explores why open source software is the only reasonable path for schools intent on bringing meaningful computer access to every child (October, 2007)
• Michigan City High School inAccess Project Study, David Thornburg, final report on the use of Linux on student desktops in Michigan City, Indiana (September, 2007)
• Mathematics and Morphology, David Thornburg, explores the underlying mathematical ideas embodied in the structure of plants. This document was created for a new project in Brazil (September, 2007)
• The Missing Revolution, David Thornburg, explores the fact that computers are still too scarce in most US classrooms (August, 2006)
• March of the Penguins: Linux Comes to the Classroom, David Thornburg, explores the growth of Linux as an alternate to other personal computer operating systems (September, 2005)
• Why EAST Matters: EAST - Preparing Students for the Future, David Thornburg, suggests that the EAST initiative is a powerful resource for helping students acquire the skills they need for life in the current century (August, 2005)
• Inquiry: The Art of Helping Students Ask Good Questions, David Thornburg, explores the power of student-initiated inquiry and project-based learning across the curriculum (February, 2004)
• Technology and Education: Expectations, not Options, David Thornburg, examines fundamental changes in technology over the past twenty years and suggests that the greatest power comes from using new tools to do new things! (January, 2004)