Online Education Beats Classroom Education

An article I found that goes a long with this chapter and the book in general is called 'Study Finds that Online Education Beats the Classroom.'  I found it interesting because it was more than just a quick study done by a researcher or newspaper but instead took 12 years and is documented 93 page report. In the report, it found that students who do some or all of their work online tested in the 59th percentile while the average classroom student ranked in the 50th percentile. I tend to agree with the findings because you can learn pretty much anything if you know where/how to look and today, kids are learning how to do so at a very young age. There is only so much iformation in a book but the knowledge on the internet is never ending. So I have to disagree with Bauerlain that we are all falling behind and learning slower because of the internet and new technology. 

I found chapter 6 to be very long and somewhat boring. I thought that the opener about Rip Van Winkle seemed more like a synopsis of the story rather than something that related to the rest of the chapter. He talked about a lot in this chapter such as voting, how our mentors have failed us, culture wars, and democracy and in my opinion it all ran together a little. Is anyone else glad that the book is over and we'll now be reading a much more positive book in terms of technology??