Personalized education

Current methods of educating students are becoming increasingly obsolete. The cognitive processes, systems, and mechanisms by and through which students learn have changed dramatically, yet few professors have changed their pedagogical style. Accordingly, many students find themselves initially faced with classes that are unnecessarily difficult, frequently boring, of unexplained relevance, taught in increasingly obsolete ways by professors who are not only clueless about the way today's students-many of them digital natives who are intimately familiar with synthetic realities, social networking sites, and mashups that their elders may not even know exist-think, interact, and learn, but who are actively hostile to their student's cognitive patterns. The increasingly rapid evolution of information and communication technology-ICT-offers new and exciting options for education, but it is doubtful that the incremental and cautious pace of educational innovation seen today is adequate to introduce them.