????她的女兒蘇珊是谷歌公司（Google）最具權威的女性，另一個女兒安妮創建了專門研究人體DNA構成的23andMe公司，還有一個女兒詹妮特則是人類學博士和流行病學家。

????你必須承認，伊澤爾?沃西基的確教子有方。

????事實上，就在數碼學習日（Digital Learning Day）這一天，由于成功地將科技融入課堂教學，這位培養了硅谷著名的沃西基姐妹的母親和其他幾位老師一起獲得了“杰出教師”的光榮稱號。相關機構對這次盛會進行了24小時網上直播，內容包括由美國教育部長阿恩?頓坎和美國聯邦通信委員會（FCC）主席朱利葉斯?格納考斯基在市政廳主持的儀式，旨在展示如何應用科技改進美國教育。

????沃西基在加里福尼亞州的帕羅奧圖高中（Palo Alto High School）被學生們昵稱為“沃”。她早在1984年就啟動了該校的新聞學項目。用她的話說，就是積極倡導“在實踐中學習”。此后，她始終走在應用科技手段改善教育事業的前列。沃西基解釋說：“老師應該成為鞭策者和教練，而不是說教者。”

????也許你能猜到，沃同樣也將自己的教育理念應用到了對女兒們的教育中。“我給她們所有人的建議是，”她說，“新聞可以教會她們如何思考，如何優先呈現最重要的信息，以及如何清晰、迅速地完成寫作。”她并不指望她們姐妹三人中會有人成為新聞記者（以及其他任何特定的行業，因為她盡量讓女兒們自己選擇職業道路）。“但我始終相信，如果她們擅長寫作，將有助于保持思路清晰。無論她們未來選擇什么職業，這一技能都會大有裨益。”

????沃西基姐妹在古恩高中（Gunn High School）就讀時開始修習新聞課程，從而掌握了寫作。詹妮特和蘇珊【這位谷歌的高級副總裁在《財富》（Fortune）最具影響力的商界女性排行榜上名列第28位】效力于校報《先知》（the Oracle）。而安妮不僅是主編，還曾經因為撰寫的體育新聞報道獲得過獎學金，她的母親回憶道，自豪之情溢于言表。今天，除了領導著生物工程技術公司之外，安妮還有另一個令人艷羨的身份：她嫁給了谷歌的聯合創始人謝爾蓋?布林。

????說到基因，很顯然，沃西基姐妹擁有優秀的基因。【她們的父親斯坦利是斯坦福大學（Stanford）的重量級物理學家，現在他領導的實驗小組正在挑戰愛因斯坦的理論；沃本人是俄國猶太移民的女兒，也是其家族中第一個讀大學的人，并且獲得了多個碩士學位。】但是，除了幸運地擁有這樣的DNA外，母親敦促她們養成的獨立學習的習慣也令沃西基姐妹受益匪淺。沃回憶道：“每周，我們都會帶著洗衣籃去圖書館，每次都借滿滿一籃子書回來。蘇珊直到現在還一直留著那個洗衣籃。”

????上世紀90年代，高科技浪潮席卷硅谷乃至全世界。沃西基家是城里最早購買計算機的家庭之一，他們購入的是蘋果電腦（Mac）。而且，沃還親自引導女兒們探索互聯網世界。她說：“我的想法是，如果有什么不明白的事情，不要光等著老師來教你，看看能不能自己找到答案。”

????現如今，對于所有人來說，獨立學習比以往任何時候都要容易。“孩子們可以使用可汗學院（Khan Academy，一家非盈利教育組織，通過在線圖書館收藏了2,100 多部教學視頻——譯注），”沃解釋道。“網絡上有還上百萬個開放教育資源，可以幫助學生們學習包括從外語到語法在內的所有知識。”

????Her daughter Susan is the most powerful woman at Google (GOOG). Her daughter Anne started 23andMe, a company that dissects your DNA makeup. Her daughter Janet is a PhD anthropologist and epidemiologist.

????You have to figure that Esther Wojcicki taught her daughters pretty well.

????The mother of Silicon Valley's well-known Wojcicki sisters is, in fact, being honored today, Digital Learning Day, as one of a small group of "great teachers" who use technology effectively in the classroom. The full-day webcast, including a town hall hosted by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, showcases how technology can improve learning in the U.S.

????Wojcicki –or Woj, as she is known at Palo Alto High School in California—has been ahead of that curve ever since she created the school's journalism program in 1984 and championed "learning by doing," as she says. "The teacher needs to be a facilitator, a coach, not a lecturer," Woj explains.

????As you might guess, Woj applied her education philosophy to raising her daughters. "My advice to all of them," she says, "was that journalism taught them how to think, how to get to the most important information first, and how to write clearly and quickly." She didn't expect any of them to be journalists (or anything in particular since she sought to empower them to make their own career choices). "But I always felt that if they could learn to write well, it would help them think clearly—which would help them in any profession they chose."

????The Wojcicki girls learned to write by taking journalism at Gunn High School. Janet and Susan (the Google SVP who ranks No. 28 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list) worked on the school newspaper, the Oracle, while Anne, her mom proudly recalls, rose to top editor and also won a scholarship for her sports stories. Today, besides heading her genetics company, Anne has another claim to fame of sorts: She is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

????Speaking of genes, they are clearly good here. (Dad Stanley is a big-deal physicist who taught at Stanford and is now leading an experiment to challenge Einstein's theories; Woj, the daughter of Jewish-Russian immigrants, was the first in her family to attend college and went on to collect graduate degrees galore.) But besides the lucky DNA, the Wojcicki daughters also benefitted from mom's urging them to learn independently. As Woj recalls, "We used to go to the library with a laundry basket and fill it up with books every week. Susan still has the laundry basket."

????In the 90s, when the tech boom transformed Silicon Valley and the world, the Wojcickis were one of the first families in town to get a computer—a Mac. And Woj steered her daughters to the web. "The idea was not to wait around for the teacher to explain something if you didn't understand it, but to see if you learn it on your own," she says.

????Today, of course, independent learning is easier than ever—for everyone. "Kids can use the Khan Academy," Woj notes. "But there are millions of Open Education Resources on the web that will help students learn anything from a foreign language to grammar."

????You can catch Esther Wojcicki in action, teaching and sharing her thoughts about technology and education, today, 10-11:30 a.m. EST, at DigitalLearningDay.org.