A comment on a NECC forum printed in its entirety below explains eloquently and perhaps better than I have read anywhere else the situation schools and educators face with the current generation of students coming in and our of our doors.

The conditions brought about by the cognitive dissonance that the students feel create a surrealistic, unproductive and disengaged daytime experience at school, divorced and fundamentally unrelated to the @home realities of their entertainment channels, culture and social networks. They know better ways to learn and communicate. They are skilled with the digital networking tools that can connect them to an emerging culture with world flattening literacy. I imagine that some of the best and brightest students feel sorry and unable to connect with the trapped and cynical late technology adopters in educational roles that get easily mired in the muck and backwater of an inherently unreliable, oppressive day old school infrastructure and technology. The subversion necessary to stay meaningful connected by day to a personal “digital softspace” in a public education institution, separates those “googling thumb drivers”, networked courageous apprentice educators and younger (in spirit) teachers from the administrators and those making us secure and walled off from all dangers in the emerging webagora. Knowing better while we muddle forward is making the old ways of teaching and learning uncomfortable and ineffective while subverting the new ways of connecting to knowledge and each other.

Thanks to David Warlick to pointing this out.