Remixing marketing messages so they apply to education is nothing new, but one of his comparisons really struck a cord for me.
Oldthink: Reading, listening or watching [i.e. learning] on the schedules set by [teachers] and [school districts].
Newthink: Getting the information, news and entertainment [students] want, when [they] want it, on the device [they] want it, with or without [teachers/classroom/instruction/whathaveyou].
I know this is certainly the way I prefer to learn. What does a classroom, school, district, curriculum need to look like to accommodate this shift? Certainly, bans on cell phones (as much as I hate them personally), social networking sites, and anything else coming down the pipe will only serve to push students away from the classroom.
I go back and forth on the issue of whether schools will even be around in the next twenty years. I see the value of the social aspect of learning, of schools being a place to gather with a purpose; however, if some schools make the shift and others don't, I do see those that fail to shift disappearing into irrelevance as students choose the schools that stop trying to restrict their learning.
