Great discussion!

I agree with what folks have said thus far.  Technology has unfortunately created a competition for everyone's, not just students', attention.  From video games to Facebook to smart phones.  As a technologist I've observed the trends of information moving online and the psychology of what makes people want to learn and have started a company called MentorMob.com.  

The vision is to crowd-source learning any topic (similar how Wikipedia crowd-sources facts) so anyone can contribute and improve the content.  Topics can be academic or non-academic.  Why can't learning to play the guitar or salsa-dancing be encouraged?  If youth enjoy learning something, anything, then they'll be more inclined to learn other things as well.  We've seen a number of creative uses for our platform including supplanting a school's music program after budget cutbacks.

Apologies in advance, this is not meant to seem like solicitation but an example of how technology can be used as an educational tool.

 Honestly, a teacher I know uses youtube to connect to parents and students. He makes video updates every single day for his kids, and he says it works really well. His youtube page is http://www.youtube.com/goffmathsix . I just think more teachers should embrace these types of things.

  I am from Argentina. Here the government gave free to all child from the public schools a netbook.  They have intranet at school and the professor send them material, videos, exercises... and see from his netbook what the student do. I hope this will be a great change! It can  be a powerfull tool!

I teach at a university which has an excellent online platform that provides our students with a blended educational experience (3-4 hours of classroom work per course and 2 to 4 hours of online work per week). The platform provides for e-books,  threaded disussions, paperless homework, exams, quizzes, weekly journals for my eyes only, team discussions, gradebook viewing, weblogs, viedos, blogs, chat formus, drop boxes for assignments, and Doc Share for my lecture notes and other reading.

We use mobile devices, tablets, and lap top computers in class. Students find blogs to extend discussion topics, google plus allows teams or students to collaborate on projects in real time, students tweet opinion and thought and political leaders about our current topics and cases.

Some traditionalist will say I have abadoned my class to technology or to social media or to the whims of students. No, I am a 67 year old, former Marine DI. I improvise and my job is help these young people learn. The role of  undergraduate education is get young people to think critically.