Research also shows that students often juggle homework and entertainment.

At Woodside, as elsewhere, students’ use of technology is not uniform. Mr. Reilly, the principal, says their choices tend to reflect their personalities.

The technology has created on campuses a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato. “The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says.

According to KPMG demographer Bernard Salt, the great challenge of the future will be for workers to embrace huge change.

Salt says that while all workers will need technology proficiency, it is in fact ‘soft skills’ that must be taught to Australian children. ‘This is the skill of being fluid, flexible, agile, social,” Salt told Yahoo7 Finance.

Demographer Bernard Salt has unveiled his report `Super connected jobs', commissioned by nbn, which looks at how jobs will change as we move further into the digital age.

Mr Salt says regardless of how technology changes, we are always going to need doctors, accountants, dentists, urban planners and teachers.It's just the way they conduct their work that might change.

it's not just about technical skills. It's about attitude - being adaptable and open to change."Lean into tech. Embrace it, learn it, master it, command it, surf it," he said.

We shouldn’t be surprised that an industry built on computer languages should see those languages as just as important as literacy and numeracy. But are they?

Logic programming is at the core of much of what coders do. It is a way to look at a problem, the world, or a piece of technology and work out what to do with it. 

What we are actually talking about is learning the art of logic. And, despite how that sounds, learning logic can be great fun. So, when someone says “everyone needs to learn to code”, hear it as “our students would benefit from understanding logic”.

while students coming through the schools system in this always on world benefit from instant access to a wealth of information from numerous sources, their attention span and desire for in depth analysis is consequently diminished. The current generation of internet consumers live in a world of "instant gratification and quick fixes" which leads to a "loss of patience and a lack of deep thinking".

In a world of instant gratification and where an alternative website is just a mouse click away website owners need to find ways to firstly grab the attention of a user, and then keep it for long enough to get your message across.

Just like with diets and food nutrition we would benefit from considering how we can create digital lifestyles which support our whole wellbeing.  There are occasions which we might indulge in some mental candy, we might need to use technology to relax and unwind – but when we use it to cope in a way which distracts us from dealing with the issue, problems arise. Using the word addiction in this conversation stigmatises technology users and the challenges facing parents and educators to effectively integrate technology into both leisure and learning in a balanced way that is tailored to the needs of individuals.

Even Khan will acknowledge that he’s not an educational professional; he’s just a nerd who improvised a cool way to teach people things. And for better or worse, this means that he doesn’t have a consistent, comprehensive plan for overhauling school curricula.

“We’ve always known that one-on-one is the best way to learn, but we’ve never been able to figure out how to do it,” Khan explains

here are a few other online tools helping to reshape education.

Tech Talk Tuesdays: Professional Development: What are the options?

When: Tuesday August 4th