Will "pocket information" change education more than "pocket calculation" did?

To what extent do you think "pocket calculators" or "pocket calculations" have changed how kids learn school math and the specifics of what they learn? My take on this is they really didn't. Kids in Virginia can use calculators on the state math tests for all parts of the test except "computation and estimation," but they rarely do because they are not accustomed to using calculators as part of learning to do math and most of the questions are more recall than application any way. How do we get beyond rote memorization of math facts and even being able to group numbers together in various "families" and leverage "pocket calculations" to change what kids do to master a new kind of mathematics that will open globally significant doors for them? Why do we "teach" fractions every year? How many times do kids encounter area and perimeter? What will it take to eliminate unnecessary redundancies and how can we leverage the ubiquitous pocket calculation tools to do this?

Given the little impact I believe pocket calculations have had on education, what can I do to ensure pocket information (mobile devices with access to Google and Wikipedia and you name it) has a greater impact?

I was eating my lunch in a teachers' lounge at an elementary school the other day and someone asked me a question. I said I didn't know but I could find out, pulled out my phone, and Googled it right then and there. I said, "With Google and Wikipedia on my hip, I don't have to remember **** anymore!" The teacher asked if she could quote me on this and we all laughed and then I talked about the pocket calculation vs pocket information challenge. The laughter stopped as the teachers reflected on their own classrooms. Can we take this on?

How do we shift so kids are not consumers of information and content but they are sifters and evaluators and remixers? How do we shift so kids no longer spend their school days at knowledge and comprehension- they spend their days at evaluation and creation? What will it take? What role might "pocket information" play in this evolution?

Asymptotes of Education

Remember the cool word "asymptotes" from your calculus days? Well, you might remember that an asymptote is sort of the calculus version of "banks on the river" as functions take off to infinity (think y = 1/x as x approaches 0 - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hyperbola_one_over_x.svg for what this looks like).

What are the asymptotes of education? Can educators imagine a day when we teach Tony Wagner's seven survival skills he illustrates in The Global Achievement Gap and not NCLB-driven, fact-based standards? What if NCLB went away, though? What would we do to hold ourselves accountable?

We complain about disjointed, discrete standards and accountability measures that do harm to kids, but what system would we design to go after the Global Acievement Gap if there were no limits?

More on differentiation

What is differentiation? Is it something a teacher does every now and then? Is it a mindset? Is it a mandate? It is really interesting for me to talk to kids in a classroom, to ask them questions like, "Is everybody in here learning the same things?" When they say, "I guess so," I ask, "So, everybody in here has the same background knowledge already?" That's when the kids look at me like I am crazy. So, I follow with, "How does your teacher deal with the fact you don't all know exactly the same stuff already if (s)he is trying to teach you the same stuff by the end of class?" "Uh, I don't know."

Here's how the conversation went with one student:
"Is everybody in here learning the same things?"
"No. Well, we're learning about the same topic, but we're all learning something different."
"What do you mean? That's got to be confusing when it's time to take a test."
"Well, the test is a different story. That tells us how much we learned. Right now, we're just learning and we'll have quizzes that will tell us what else we have to learn."
"So, does everyone have to learn the same thing eventually?"
"Yeah, the state has these standards. But right now, we get to learn different things at different times based on the jobs we have. Like, I have to learn about the qualifications of the governor because I get to screen all of the applications to run for office. Other people will learn about the qualifications when I tell them who can run and who can't and why."
"So, the class is doing the teaching?"
"And the learning."
"What does the teacher do?"
"He makes sure we're on the right track. Right now, those three kids found different information on different web sites and he's helping them know which information to believe."
"Well, that's different. Shouldn't he just be up here telling you guys everything you need to know?"
"Not really. This is different. This class is not about the facts, its about putting the facts together to make sense. We're the only ones who can do that!"

Is this differentiation?

Two terms of interest: differential and integral

Anyone who has survived high school or college calculus has at least heard the two terms differential and integral. Basically, differential calculus is the science of breaking complex curves down in to tiny pieces one can easily describe. A circle becomes a series of very short, straight lines in differential calculus. Integral calculus puts the very short, straight lines back together to approximate the real-life circle. Pretty cool.

Now, think about education. In education, we use the terms "differentiate" and "integrate" - the verbs around differential and integral. When a teacher "differentiates" a lesson, is that anything like "breaking complex curves down in to tiny pieces one can easily describe?" When a teacher integrates a lesson, is that anything like "put(ting) the very short, straight lines back together to approximate the real-life circle?"