When I worked for the U.S. Department of Education, I had the good fortune to visit some of the energy labs run by the Department of Energy. My immediate thought was what a wonderful curriculum resource these places could be. And in fact, some projects did grow out of this. Working with the Department of Energy folks, the kids developed some interesting solutions to a problem with selenium. But that kind of thing was very much the exception.
Schools are three knowledge generations behind reality.
And that's a shame because we have a technology that could bridge this gap. The Internet hasn't been tried yet in schools. Most kids, if they're lucky, have access less than 40 minutes a week. The chance we have with technology is to analyze problems differently, to create new ways of knowing. Because the younger students are the ones who are going to show us the way.