How is technology, social media, gaming, multimedia, etc. transforming education?

This response is for an elearning course I am taking this summer. I am a history teacher at a public high school, so I speak mainly from that viewpoint; but, I am also interested in adult learning and instructional design for purposes of training and professional development.

Technology is transforming education rapidly by offering new and alternate forms of interaction and delivery of content to diverse learners. While at one time the "digital divide" was the concern of educators in the K-12 realm, the ubiquity of affordable and fast technology in the form of PCs, notepads, phones, gaming and entertainment devices, and wireless networks in the last 5 years has virtually silenced this issue. Now the reality of technology's role in our society cannot be avoided by educators, and reluctant adopters must acquiesce to accept on-line learning, digital portfolio based assessment, and personalized (not standardized) learning using technology innovations inside and outside the traditional classroom.

In my own teaching, I have transitioned from what Curtis Bonk, in his prequel to The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education, states as the "2nd wave" to what he says is the "3rd wave" of technology use. The "2nd wave" is when technology is used by an instructor to expand learning - in my case, to find new lesson plan ideas, to join a list-serve of educators who teach my subject nationwide, to access information, visuals, and sources to use in my standardized, instructor-based lessons daily. In the last few years, I have endevoured to delve into the "3rd wave", where technology is used to enhance learning. Here I have developed lectures using multimedia and PowerPoint, have created assignments where students conduct independent research using the internet, have developed an on-line discussion group for my classes, have posted assignments, rubrics, extended readings, and suggested web sites on a class website, and have begun to ask students to turn in their class assignments to me digitally, using an anti-plagiarism website.

When will I transition to Bonk's "4th wave" - where technology transforms the traditional learning environment? I've walked past and sometimes observed classrooms of peers (almost always younger than me) where students appear to working more individually and are busy on laptop computers creating wikis and blogs to demonstrate their learning. I've wondered how to structure and inititate these activities, and what my role is as the instructor in these settings. I want to know more about how these experiences are created and assessed, and what results come more personalized, technologically based learning.

For several years, I have asked junior AP history students to create an historiographic survey of a topic to present to the class following the AP exam in May. The process takes many weeks, and I find myself not only demonstrating and modelling my expectations, but working more one-on-one with students as they explore the research process and their topic of choice in a trial and error fashion. This project and the presentations that result turn out to the most rewarding and feel-good part of the year for not only myself, but the students also. I have videotaped the presentations, quantified the components of the assignment, built modules for students to complete at their own pace, and have time for reflection a major part of the learning process - all of this is and can be facilitated by technology. Is this a taste of the "4th wave"?

My fear is: to get this point in their learning, the students needed to have completed the survey course that preceeded it. The fact that each presentation builds on a common vocabulary of the content of a subject area is what makes the presentations so fun - all the students are engaged in the topics and comprehend the historiography because we have learned the canon of thought that is considered "the norm" on the topic. How do the students learn the content of the canon in their own, individualized, technologically aided way? That is the real issue teachers are afraid of and enticed by...