The Electronic Schoolhouse: A Bright Future for Education

It helps to have a sense of humor. The problems facing our kids in the public schools are enormous. On the one hand, we must teach students to take ownership of their learning process. On the other hand, our educational institutions have let our kids down—badly.

As parents and teachers, we want to share our own experience with our kids, and demonstrate the importance of responsibility and hard work. But kids remind us of the critical importance of learning by doing, accepting real challenges, exploring the unknown, gazing in wonder, and just plain having fun in the learning process.

We need to bring these natural human qualities back into our schools as learning strategies, or we will lose the respect and loyalty of our students. Why? Because nowadays, children can find their own rite of passage, hero's journey or visual wonderland on their own, at the touch of a mobile screen.

There is no simple answer to fixing what is broken in our public schools. But very recently, the Internet has combined with mobile devices and apps to create an unprecedented window of opportunity known as cloud technology. If we put our kids first and invest in their future, we have a once in a lifetime chance to revolutionize both the way that teachers reach our students, and the way that students can find resources and empower themselves to learn.

Why must school be boring? Here are four creative and optimistic short essays that parents, students, teachers and eLearning professionals will not want to miss. Written by a versatile professional home tutor, scientist and entrepreneur, these fresh perspectives offer a glimpse of how eLearning and mobile technologies can deliver what is needed to every individual—something that did not occur in the traditional classroom.

Paradoxically, technologies once considered to be threats to human dignity and quality of life now offer the best hope of rebuilding our declining educational system. We are in the midst of a cloud-based, mobile revolution in eLearning technologies that can thoroughly transform and rescue our public schools from oblivion. If, of course, we have the wisdom to channel the powerful forces that have already transformed our global village.