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We tell them our answers before they’ve asked the questions. We drill them and test them and tell them they’ve failed if they don’t regurgitate back our lectures as lessons learned. That is a system built for the industrial age, for the assembly line, stamping out everything the same: students as widgets, all the same.

Google, he said, is looking for “non-routine problem-solving skills.”

“In the real world,” he said, “the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean glean from the free market.”

We must stop our culture of standardized testing and standardized teaching

We must stop looking at education as a product – in which we turn out every student giving the same answer – to a process, in which every student looks for new answers. Life is a beta.

The school becomes not a factory but an incubator.

Conversely, the problem with the internet is there’s too much information, and it’s difficult to determine which data is valuable.

The iPhone is aiding Abilene in giving students the information they need — when they want it, wherever they want it, said Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies who helped plan the initiative.

nstead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.

“Polling opens up new realms for people for discussion,” said Tyler Sutphen, an ACU sophomore who has participated in the iPhone initiative for a year. “It’s a lot more interactive for those who aren’t as willing to jump up and throw out their answer in class. Instead, you push a button on the iPhone.”