An article in ComputerWorld had a report on the 4th annual School of the Future Summit in Seattle, USA. It outlined how schools in the USA could prepare their students better if they embraced social networking and online learning.

There were people on both sides of the fence, of course. On one side of the fence were folks who said:

Students don’t always do what’s best for themselves. Often, they will hold on to tradition: ‘Define what I need to know, tell me, and then I’ll give it back to you.

Contrast that with:

I’d like to see us get rid of courses and create classroom delivery models that are more about how we work in the real world.

Somewhere in the middle were examples of what schools and virtual schools were doing to bridge that gap between what is and what could be.

But I’d agree more with the latter quote. Kids need to use and get used to technologies that will help them now and in the future. They need to learn how to think for themselves and how to learn. Our role then as educators is to facilitate the process and to model positive values and practices.