Will Richardson provides an introduction to the Blogosphere, WikiWorld, and Podcast Planetarium and heavily stresses the importance of incorporating the Read/Write Internet into school systems nationwide.  His advocation for the Internet in the classroom setting is inaugurated most likely from similar assertions from organizations like The National Technology Plan who released a statement in January 2005 claiming that, “Students today, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy” (p. 6).  This growing gap between the internet savvy and the internet confused is a phenomenon that has been been in question for the last decade, for it is unavoidable and remarkably uncontrollable.  The way we have understood education in the past starkly contrasts the desire to be digitally connected with others through a medium which facilitates human connectivity beyond anything ever imagined only a decade prior.  But because this widening gap  is proving to spawn constant questions as to the pedogogical instruction that should be implemented in school systems, researchers have deemed it imperative to begin setting the tracks for a more digitized Web frontier for K-12 learners.

Digital Immigrants termed by educational theorist, Marc Pensky, is perhaps an accurate definition for older teachers who are out of touch with the digital world we live in today, not for reasons attributable to incompetency; rather,  age seems to be the most recognizable barrier, i.e., the internet is only approximately twelve years old.  Part of the Richardson’s research advocates the assimilation of older teachers into more Web-based method for instruction in order to act in accordance with young learners whose increase knowledge and dexterity in internet surfing has caused their minds to be less “suited with a linear progression of learning” (p. 7).  Generally accustomed to jumping around from page to page, blog to blog, young students have been developing a different way in which they apprehend information.  This awareness  has led many educational theorists to further argue for more internet based projects in classrooms.

Unfortunate for young learners, the move from non-internet based assignments, to assignments instructing students to write or read using a medium they are well adapted to, has been taken exteremly slow.  Protections against online predators, explicit content, and profane blogs and/or responses to student’s blogs are constantly being updated, and teachers should be in the practice of constantly reminding students of the dangers in web-browsing as far as identity preservation goes.  Still, parents, ones who are not readily accessing the internet or who strongly fear for their child’s security, are possible impediments to the rise of internet based teaching in classrooms.  I believe that we have only seen the spark to the explosive nature of the internet today, and we will definitely need to investigate the way children are accessing information.  The methods used to access information do have, as we have seen through history, a great influence on the acquisition of knowledge.