Being a Webmaster is one of today's hottest careers, yet five or six years ago Webmasters did
not even exist. This is an example of how education must consider preparing students for jobs
that have yet to be created. Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,
recently said (1997), "One of the most central dynamic forces [in the economy] is the accelerated
expansion of computer and telecommunications technologies...clearly our educational institutions
will continue to play an important role in preparing workers to meet these demands" (pg. 98). He
also stated, "workers are facing the likelihood that they will need retooling during their
careers...education is increasingly becoming a lifelong activity" (pg. 100). To prepare students to
be lifelong learners requires a new approach to teaching, one in which students are taught how to
learn on their own.

Unfortunately, we don't have to look hard to find teachers utilizing new technological tools to
replicate old educational models. For example, most uses of distance education employ the same
instructor delivering the same lecture to the same audience, only now the audience can be larger.
This distance education model does nothing to address the concept of lifelong learning. This
traditional model still places the student in a passive role, merely absorbing as much information
as possible. Instead, more collaborative models of distance education could be employed. For
example, The Center for Technology and Teacher Education at the University of Virginia uses live
video connections with partner universities to bring together professors and students in a forum
where all parties contribute and benefit from the collaborative learning experience. However, the
overall dependence on the traditional instructional model dominates the majority of today's
educational system.

Much of the failure to utilize technology in education today is, as Thornburg puts it, "the 

assumption that content [is] king...in a world of rapid information growth, it is context that 

matters...context is king" (in Thorburg, 1997, pg. 5). Thornburg advocates that rather than teach 

students a stockpile of facts to use "just in case" they might need them some day, that instead 

learning be put in context - i.e. master the ability to gather the appropriate facts and then 

creatively leverage those facts towards the learning objective. Teachers should create situations 

where the students are required to locate the facts and information specifically related to the 

context of the question at hand, and then to utilize that information effectively.