At 10 o’clock on Friday morning at Cross Roads Middle School in Columbia, South Carolina, it’s time for kids to put away their pencils and books and take out their video games.

This is a class that has a teacher with enough vision to realize how technology is changing the world and in particular recognizing leadership and vision of youth today. The class is simply called Media Technology. The teacher with the vision is Dr. Cris Craft.

“I serve more as someone to help answer questions,” added the Dr. Craft , “And truth be told, most of the time, I don’t even know the answer! So we end up looking together.”

“They like the opportunity to pursue their own interests,” explained Craft. “It’s an opportunity for kids to really get some first hand experience with cutting edge technologies like building a websites or building apps for different phones and building games for the Xbox 360.”

“Kids love to play video games, but they need to think about the design elements that actually go into making one as well. My goal is that kids not be just consumers of technology but creators of it.”

If you’re a student and don’t have access to such cutting edge technology or coursework in your school, Microsoft wants you to know they want to help. Microsoft developed a program called Microsoft DreamSpark. This is a program that is offered to students of many studies to allow them to download thousands of dollars worth of free software and learn from the very technology.

DreamSpark is simple:

It’s about giving students Microsoft professional tools at no charge.