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Moreover—and perhaps most damning—by blocking and banning many of the tools and Web sites that form the cornerstone of teenagers’ experiences, educators deny themselves access to the conversations that students are having about how to use these tools intelligently, ethically, and well. And given the overwhelming flow of information that students can access using such tools, it is essential that educators become part of those conversations.

Districts have spent thousands of dollars installing interactive whiteboards—which are a more powerful, more engaging chalkboard. And yes, they are a tool with some very useful functions, and yes, we have them at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, where I am principal. But let me be clear: interactive whiteboards only enable a teacher-centric style of teaching to be more engaging than it would have been with a traditional chalkboard. Much of the prepackaged educational gaming similarly makes the same mistake.

The single greatest challenge schools face is helping students make sense of the world today. Schools have gone from information scarcity to information overload. This is why classes must be inquiry driven. Merely providing content is not enough, nor is it enough to simply present students with a problem to solve. Schools must create ways for students to come together as a community to ask powerful questions and dare them to bring all of their talents to bear on real-world problems.

Colorado State University offers a useful guide to reading on the web. While it is aimed at college students, much of the information is pertinent to readers of all ages and could easily be part of lessons in the classroom. The following list includes some of the CSU strategies to strengthen reading comprehension, along with my thoughts on how to incorporate them into classroom instruction: Synthesize online reading into meaningful chunks of information. In my classroom, we spend a lot of time talking about how to summarize a text by finding pertinent points and casting them in one’s own words. The same strategy can also work when synthesizing information from a web page. Use a reader’s ability to effectively scan a page, as opposed to reading every word. We often give short shrift to the ability to scan, but it is a valuable skill on may levels. Using one’s eye to sift through key words and phrases allows a reader to focus on what is important. Avoid distractions as much as necessary. Readbility is one tool that can make this possible. Advertising-blocking tools are another effective way to reduce unnecessary, and unwanted, content from a web page. At our school, we use Ad-Block Plus as a Firefox add-on to block ads. Understand the value of a hyperlink before you click the link. This means reading the destination of the link itself. It is easier if the creator of the page puts the hyperlink into context, but if that is not the case, then the reader has to make a judgment about the value, safety, and validity of the link. One important issue to bring into this discussion is the importance of analyzing top-level domains. A URL that ends in .gov, for example, was created by a government entity in the U.S. Ask students what it means for a URL to end in .edu. What about .org? .com? Is a .edu or .org domain necessarily trustworthy? Navigate a path from one page in a way that is clear and logical. This is easier said than done, since few of us create physical paths of our navigation. However, a lesson in the classroom might do just that: draw a map of the path a reader goes on an assignment that uses the web. That visualization of the tangled path might be a valuable insight for young readers.