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Eight more schools will open this fall with the goal of using technology to change the way students and teachers work together, according to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s inaugural column on the Huffington Post’s new New York City site.

The schools will be in the model of the NYCiSchool, a small, selective high school that opened in Tribeca last fall as the first school in the city’s NYC21C initiative. (The name refers to the “21st-century skills” that technology-infused schools teach.) Klein touted the iSchool at the small schools panel discussion he introduced last week, saying that the school provides an example of how technology can be used to ”tailor the instructional journey of the child to the child’s needs.”

In his column today, Klein writes that the iSchool is pioneering a new “technology ‘culture,’” one that more schools should emulate:

In the past three years, the New York City Department of Education has created a number of technologies that allow teachers, principals, and parents to better understand students’ strengths and weaknesses and create academic programs that are tailored to the students’ needs. …

For New York City, the next big change is to change our technology “culture,” so we begin using modern tools to rethink the way our schools and classrooms are organized to most effectively engage students and bolster their achievement.

An iSchool student, Angelica Modabber, wrote about getting accustomed to using technology in her classes on this site in December. (more…)