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Perhaps more important for education, Internetcapable mobile devices will outnumber computers within the next year.

This shift in the means of connecting to the Internet is being enabled by the convergence of three trends: the growing number of Internet-capable mobile devices, increasingly flexible web content, and continued development of the networks that support connectivity.

But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on  something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.”

Thiel notes a handful of students told him that whether they were selected or not, they were leaving school to start a company. Many more built tight relationships with competing applicants during the brief Silicon Valley retreat– a sort of support group of like-minded restless students.

Of course, if the problem Thiel sees with the higher education bubble is elitism, why were so many of the invitees Ivy League kids? Where were the smart inner-city kids let down by economic blight and a failing education system of a city like Detroit; the kids who need to be lifted up the most?

are people confusing talking to people online with deep, connected learning? Does being part of a social networking site or a NING community mean you are going deep- growing  in your ability to co-construct or deconstruct knowledge? Does it mean you are collaborating if you post, reply to a post, Tweet, or engage in a #edchat conversation? Are we moving toward an acceptance of superficiality as a replacement for deep learning? Has our multiple choice  culture trained our brains to believe that innovation is the holy grail?

If all I do is network I do not shift or grow because I am missing the opportunity to go deep and actually learn by doing. It takes both: Networks and Community. Online, global communities of practice and f2f learning communities in my local context.

Imagine the deep learning that can be produced when we come together in learning communities and do some of the following (below).

The question should not be "Does technology fit into my traditional way of teaching my class in high school?" but rather "How can I modify and further improve the learning environment, ongoing assessment methods, and opportunities I provide students to interact with each other and our curriculum?"

We need to be asking and analyzing WHAT THE STUDENTS DID AND ARE DOING with their laptops, and perhaps even more importantly WHAT ARE TEACHERS ASKING STUDENTS TO DO with their laptops.

we have to be asking what teachers are doing with their laptops, and asking students to do with them. The importance of asking this question is vital! If teachers are merely "accomodating" learning with digital tools, rather than "transforming" or "infomating" the ways they are teaching and inviting students to learn-- then the laptops may indeed be a waste of money and energy.

Siri still makes mistakes. With Siri, however, speech recognition is a conversation, and people are accustomed to dealing with misunderstandings in conversation.

Apple developers have "actually taken some of the capabilities out currently, so I fully expect it to evolve quickly," SRI's Winarsky says. One of the features Apple removed was the ability to book a table at a restaurant automatically. It seems likely that Apple is inking deals and polishing features as fast as it can to restore that functionality to the app.