Last week I spoke on a panel called "Classroom 2.0" at a conference called Office 2.0 (there is video here, you just have to scroll through the "on demand" videos and look for Classroom 2.0). Near the end, someone asked something along the lines of whether the classroom experience would become obsolete and be replaced by technology. I thought about this question again after seeing this story about the success of virtual schools (K-12) in Florida. I mention virtual schools in "Totally Wired" as one way the education system is becoming more "wired" by meeting the needs of home schoolers and advanced placement (AP) students in rural areas without access to those classes. The Associated Press article also mentions the success of virtual school with students with learning disabilities.

While distance learning or online education has been proliferating at the college level for years (and has even made it to YouTube), it is just beginning to happen in K-12 education. And just because it has become a convenient solution for adult learners, I don't think it can or should completely replace the classroom setting for kids and teens (even if that setting is a small group of home schooled kids or at an alternative school).

One of my fellow panelists, Rushton Hurley, founder of Next Vista Learning and a classroom teacher who teaches Japanese to high school students, explained why the classroom is still important. It pushes teens to want to do better. I think the "it" he was talking about was feedback from your peers. He talked about the process of his language students creating a skit in Japanese, recording and editing it and posting it online (and how each time he did this project over the years, he would add new technology and the students continued to do better and better). But more than the technology itself, the feedback students received from each other was a key motivator in how engaged they were in the project (and how much they learned). If anything, the internet gave these students an even larger audience to "perform" for (including students in Japan).

You could argue that you can still work collaboratively with your peers online through discussion threads, video and other technology. But for kids and teens who are still learning face-to-face social norms, that in-person group dynamic is invaluable. The virtual learning experience should be integrated with the classroom experience, just as teens' offline worlds have become seamlessly integrated with their online worlds. It's just another way to learn, just as it's simply another way for teens to stay connected and communicate.

Update: Here is the video from the Office 2.0 panel: