Don’t believe that a computer should replace a school – I teach at an online school and for the neediest kids it is the worst place they could be for the most part. For self-motivated children with involved parents it probably isn’t going to hurt, but there are large numbers of the very opposite sort of people out there as well.

Exploration is this big key word – but studies are showing that our use of this method in some subjects is harming students, rather than helping.

Another problem as I see it is that colleges of education spend way too much time trying to teach people how to teach rather than making sure they are grounded in the knowledge of their subject. I often feel I was ill prepared in subject knowledge (my school didn’t require me to take course on Shakespeare or Grammar before graduating with a degree in Integrated Language Arts and the way the schedule fell meant that because I missed the class at a certain time it wasn’t avaliable again before I graduated without having to miss *required* classes in Education and therefore extend my graduation and student teaching by another entire year).

All of that rambling . . . not sure what I wanted to say except there are a variety of problems and there is no one right answer, different things work in different schools but the key is well trained teachers (not those who spent a year learning to design bulletin boards) who feel confident in their ability to instruct and mentor students.