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The problem is that for most of us our technological tools now manage us.

It’s personal, but not large (or bulky) enough to truly be a barrier to teaching from the front.

Two recent events at Stanford University suggest that the day is growing nearer when quality higher education confronts the technological disruptions that have already upended the music and book industries, humbled enterprises from Kodak to the Postal Service (not to mention the newspaper business), and helped destabilize despots across the Middle East.

Do American students have too much homework or too little? Neither, I’d say. We ought to be asking a different question altogether. What should matter to parents and educators is this: How effectively do children’s after-school assignments advance learning?

Second, what motivates people to practice a skill for thousands of hours? The most reliable answer is passion

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

Digital orphans have grown up with a great deal of tech access — but very little guidance.

Digital exiles are at the opposite extreme — they’ve been raised with minimal technology.

Digital heirs have impressive tech skills, thanks largely to their parents and teachers.