Which technology will change teaching the most?

We asked tech expert Bryan Alexander, of the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, which are going to have the largest effects on classrooms.

* RICH MEDIA

Forget book reports. Now kids can make their own movies, radio shows, and multimedia presentations. With MP3s, audio recorders, and audio-editing software, it's easy to create lessons that use audio in creative ways. "Microsoft now has a free download called Moviemaker," says Alexander. "You'll see more and more of this. Soon kids will send each other video clips like today they send e-mail jokes."

* PERSONAL RESPONSE SYSTEMS

Know instantly who is grasping the lesson and who is falling behind. "The teacher gives clickers to the class and has a computer up front that can receive signals from the devices," Alexander explains. "You can ask a question, and the kids all answer simultaneously through the clickers. They allow you to mandate that everyone reply, saving you the pain and time of making every kid physically give the answer."

* AUGMENTED REALITY 

"The term is ugly," admits Alexander, "but it refers to taking a digital object and associating it with a physical object." Still confused? Alexander tells of a group who collaborated on a piece of historical fiction set in turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, broke it into chunks, and cued each chunk to a city block by using a tablet PC with a GPS card. When viewers walked from block to block, the computer would feed them the next section of the story. Wow--and that's only the beginning!

* BLOGS AND WIKIS 

Blogs and wikis are simply self-published Web sites. Wikis allow anybody (say, all of your students) to contribute whenever they like. "Wikis would have taken over the world by now," Alexander quips, "if the name wasn't so stupid." Some teachers, including Alexander, require their students to create class blogs, where they can post homework assignments and engage with each other's work.