Peter

This is a great point i totally agree, to many students are leaving school with the assumption that they will be constantly using Microsoft Word forever. Such things as open office are being over looked and what will be discovered is that not all students have the financial capabilities of supporting enterprise level software.

Cheers

Mitchell

Jared

I have found that the best areas to go into are areas that are applicable to their world.
I think you would be hard pushed not to find children that do not have myspace, facbook or any other social networking site.

The challenge is to make students see that the web is more than just a place to chat to friends. Nearly all syllabuses now encompass group work. Show them places to collaborate together online.

Use it to create evidence of correct group work, blogging is a vital skill that will become more and more important as time progresses along with podcasts, vodcasts and all other forms of communication.

Let me know if you want to continue this discussion

Cheers

Mitchell