Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

I was excited to read what I hope will be a levelheaded and open-minded account of education in the digital age. I'm more hopeful still seeing a forward (perfunctory, alas, but nevertheless) from John Seely Brown and a blurb from Don Norman. Chapters like "What May be Lost and what May be Gained" seem promising as well.

But I couldn't make it through the preface before getting skeptical again:

"If educators cannot successfully integrate new technologies into what it means to be a school, then the long identification of schooling with education...will dissolve into a world where students with the means and ability will pursue their learning outside of public school."

Students of means and ability will always and forever supplement their learning outside of public school, of course, and I hardly think anyone would see that as problematic, except that a student's means should be much less an issue than it is currently. And indeed, technology is making it easier, more interesting, more social and less expensive to pursue learning informally and independently. I'm right beside the authors in celebrating that fact. What an age we live in when it comes to opportunities to learn, truly.

But if the authors mean to imply that a failure to integrate new technologies somehow threatens to preclude formal schooling from being a meaningful source of education, well, both my FUD and my bullshit detector start going off. I'm barely past the preface, so maybe they don't, but boy, rarely a day goes by that someone doesn't make that facile claim: if higher ed doesn't embrace web 2.0 it will cease to be relevant, to exist in our lifetime. Clotted nonsense. More to come on Rethinking.