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Simply, it’s time to admit that the Internet has changed the way we do scholarship and will go on changing it. There is so much inertia in the academic world, so much affection for fussy old ways. People love getting all the brackets and commas and abbreviations just so. Perhaps it gives them a feeling of accomplishment. Professors torment students over the tiniest details of bibliographical information, when anyone wishing to check can simply put the author name and title in any Internet search engine. A doctoral student hands in a brilliant essay and the professor complains that the translator’s name has not been mentioned in a quotation from a recent French novel, though of course since the book is recent there is only one translation of the novel and in any event anyone checking the cited edition will find the translator’s name in the book.

So what is the Internet of things? Simply put this is the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.

2012-13, The US department of Commerce ranked 55 industry sectors for their IT intensiveness, education ranked lowest (below coal mining). Education industry that bears the responsibility to prepare children for the world of tomorrow, itself is not ready to embrace the digital revolution with an open mind.

Indeed there are some real risks attached with children using social media and it can’t be taken lightly. But there are also dangers in crossing a road. Do we tell our kids not to cross the road? No, we don’t! We hold their hand and tell them how to do it.

So irrespective of whether or not you as an institution are ready to embrace the new digital ways of teaching, the revolution is already happening. If educators are left behind on social media, they will also fail in the simple role of being cultivators of curiosity.