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Creating one's own simulations is quite challenging. It is a good reminder of how it feels to be a student struggling with a new concept. I am trying to figure out if a tool like SCRATCH has usesfulness for high school kids, but to do so I have to spend some time figuring out its capabilities. I think that there is no question that the web contains trememdous potential for our students and for ourselves as a source of good learning, but it also contains tremendous potential as a source of misinformation and distraction. As we said earlier in the institute, not all data is created equal (e.g. Wikipedia)

Blogs and wikis, I think, are terrific tools. Our students are so used to get their information electronically, it's as if they expect that to be the only way to get it and to share it. We don't have to buy into the notion that electronic communication is the only type of worthwhile communication, but we should recognize its value, and use it. Our audience recognizes its value and is eager to use it.

Which makes me think that one of the most important things we need to teach our students is critical thinking vis a vis electronic resources; i.e. how to evaluate the information they get electronically. We need to be careful to do the same thing.