You are right in suggesting that we may be more effective if we can view students as resources. You suggest that teachers’ roles will be to help students manage their own learning. Maybe the teachers’ job will be not to teach management but to inspire and hone interest among our youth. Certainly there may be “nothing new under the sun” with the internet in front of the child, but the value of reframing the knowledge into something interesting may be the real mission of education. Our positive reaction to the information that a student brings to class is what inspires him to stay engaged.

The class issue is an important one, and I thank you for reminding me (once again) that I work in Disneyland when it comes to public education. We have to work to give these same opportunities to kids in poorer districts who have much less to learn with.

What do you mean when you say “we don’t have a real clear picture of what your kids’ futures look like?” The range of possibilities isn’t *that* wide. We don’t know what percentage of your students will work as free agents, possibly at home, possibly as part of an international team of people they never meet, possibly doing the information age equivalent of piece work, but I think that pretty much describes as far as things can go in one direction. Another alternative is that all energy costs climb dramatically and we have to grow more food and manufacture more things locally, but we’ve done that before. Perhaps all our brains will just be plugged into the Matrix, and we’ll just lie in jelly-filled pods, but I don’t think that’s where you’re driving. Are we talking about making some fundamental changes to how money and power are distributed in society? If that’s what we’re talking about, it seems less likely to happen now than it did in much of the 20th century, or at least no moreso. Probably what has changed is that there is more uncertainty for children of the professional classes who attend your school. Being an accountant or laywer or college professor isn’t a safe bet for 2050, but that is no more uncertainty the working classes endured throughout the 20th century.

When you say that kids are coming to class with more knowledge of computers than their teachers, hasn’t that always been the case, for the past 20 years at least? Is this news? Is this trend increasing or decreasing? And again, this varies based on class.

Your second point, however, is the right one. Emphasize that one.

If students do all their writing in blogs then, instead of including footnotes or end notes which teachers may have to hunt down and verify, ask the kids to link to their sources. Teachers can easiliy verify sources by clicking on the link. This also entails that students become MORE responsible for using appropriate references. They can’t hide behind the hope that the teacher wont check because it’s so easy for the teacher to do so.