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We talk a lot in schools about wishing we were somehow more supported by our communities, but schools also need to be more encouraging of that relationship. To address this, Zolt envisioned, and made real, In2Books, ePals’ flagship literacy program. In a nutshell, In2Books selects a carefully screened volunteer, let’s say a business exec from AOL, and pairs that professional with a student to discuss books through letter writing that is teacher-guided and teacher-approved. It’s as simple as that. It’s book buddies brought into the 21st Century.

Education, after all, isn’t an acquisitive process, an exercise in procuring and storing information. Instead, learning is a social process, one in which people get from point A – ignorance – to point B – enlightenment – through a messy combination of challenge, failure and consolidation. While there might be a few people who can (and should) take advantage of open-source learning models, there are, I suspect, far more who can’t. Information, in the absence of the ability to apply it, isn’t very valuable, as anybody who’s ever tried to fix their own car using only the supplied factory manual understands only too well”.