Nick Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher on Twitter) teaches high school English at Grosse Pointe South High School in Grosse Pointe, MI. He also blogs at TheNerdyTeacher.com.

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, England, and a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Professor Mitra works in the areas of cognitive science, information science and educational technology, and he has a keen interest in engineering and software development. This is an excerpt from his new e-book, Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning.

In early 1999, some colleagues and I sunk a computer into the opening of a wall near our office in Kalkaji, New Delhi. The area was located in an expansive slum, with desperately poor people struggling to survive. The screen was visible from the street, and the PC was available to anyone who passed by. The computer had online access and a number of programs that could be used, but no instructions were given for its use.

Jim Berman (@ChefTalkJim on Twitter) is a Chef Instructor working with 10th, 11th and 12th graders at Delcastle Technical High School in Wilmington, Delaware. A member of FENI and the National Restaurant Association, he's a contributor to the Cooking Without Borders blog.

This blog is the first of three in a series on Career and Technical Education.

A Viable Alternative to "Success"

What shop class is not:

• A predetermined destination for students with discipline issues
• The alternative venue for teenage offenders opting to avoid prison
• A bandage for an oft-bleeding system

Dr. Danielle Moss Lee (@HEAFNYC on Twitter) is President and CEO at Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF). With a background in administration and non-profits, she's passionate about educational equity, college access, curriculum and youth development. Read her blog at http://www.heaf.org/blog/.

Let me start out by assuring readers that I'm not suggesting it takes a magical coat of arms to survive life on a predominantly white campus if you're a student of color. Over the decades, tens of thousands of students of color have been effectively and happily educated on predominantly white college campuses across this wonderful country of ours, and most of those students look back fondly on their college experiences.

Geoff Butterfield has served The George Lucas Educational Foundation for 17 years as IT Director, Senior Technical Producer and most recently Technical Production Director at Edutopia. He is also co-owner of Coconut Moon Web Services. We will miss him!

I've always said, "I'll leave when the website is done, or the educational system is fixed," which made my colleagues giggle. Anyone who's ever worked on a big website like edutopia.org knows there's always something to do, just as anyone who's ever worked on education reform thinks Sisyphus is a big baby who should stop whining and get back to work.