Just four months ago, a class of 20 first graders at Monarch Academy, a K-5 charter school in Oakland, California, couldn't operate a mouse, much less log in to and operate a digital program. By February, the kids had become capable computer users, able to tackle a range of activities and the Web and ready for the next new thing their…

There are a lot of useful tools on the Web, all those social applications, and the like. Still most people go online for one thing--to perform a basic search. For most fact-finding missions, the Web is there. But--as media specialists well know--the sheer wealth of online information can hamper efforts to focus on a few reliable references.…