This commentary is part of a series of articles prepared by Voices of Educators, a nonprofit coalition designed to foster debate and public policy change within Hawai'i's public education system, in partnership with The Advertiser. It appears in Focus on the first Sunday of the month.

In June 2009, the front cover of an Education Week insert posed the question, "What should a 21st-century classroom look like?" The editor's note inside read: "Teaching Generation Tech: The Real World vs. the Classroom."

The stories throughout reflected the same theme: "Game On: High-tech Simulations Linked to Learning," "Instant Class Feedback with the Push of a Button," Global Competition: The New Classroom Look," "Simulated vs. Hands-on Lab Experiments," "Tapping Into 'Cloud' Power" and "Nanotech Lessons." It is difficult to imagine such topics being covered in a publication targeted to K-12 educators a mere decade ago.

Throughout history, technologies have had a dramatic impact on how we live and work, and yes, how we learn. Today, new technologies are again having an unprecedented impact on education. We are still conducting many of the same tasks, but new technologies are shifting our approach to those tasks. For sharing information and communicating with peers, we use such things as Facebook, blogs and Twitter. For creating, we use Flash, Flikr, Mashups. We conduct meetings using webinars. We search using Google. We organize in Wikis. We experiment using simulations and visualizations. We experience through 3-D worlds such as Second Life.

Our students are increasingly growing up in a digital age that is changing rapidly. They are different because of that fact. The research on cultural migration teaches us that those born in a new culture learn the language easily and resist using the old. Our children today are digital natives — born into a new culture. Those of us who are digital immigrants, coming later into this new world, have two choices. We can choose to adapt, accepting that we do not know this world as well as our children. Or we can be inflexible immigrants, focusing on how good things used to be. We must face the fact that our students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

The issue is not about the technology itself, but about the mindset of our students. They are connected, mobile, social, instantaneous and entertainment-oriented. They have redefined expertise as collective knowledge, often made up of small, cumulative contributions (think Wikipedia). For them, knowledge is open, collaborative, accessible, often from the bottom up, and frequently presented in multimedia.

For us, knowledge is individually controlled, comes from the top down (experts), and generally is presented in text-based form. We want to release information slowly and only after it has been vetted by experts; they want to receive information quickly and from multiple sources. We want to do things step-by-step, one thing at a time; they want to multitask and use parallel processing. We want independent work with a focus on the individual student; they want to use simultaneous networks and collaborate. We want learning to be serious work; they want learning to be fun.

Text is our primary mechanism for disseminating information and assessing knowledge; they prefer visuals, sound and multimedia. We rely on curriculum guides and tests and focus on deferred rewards (it will help you later); they want "just-in-time" learning that is relevant and useful and provides instant rewards. We see schools as the place to learn; they see the world as the place to learn.

Our schools today reflect our adult preferences, not theirs. Some might agree with Marc Prensky who said, "School is becoming an increasingly moribund and irrelevant institution whose only function is to provide students a credential their parents say they need."

The learning environment of the past has a factory-like appearance, with rows of chairs and desks, standard sized rooms, isolated classes, rigid boundaries between grades and disciplines, age-based groupings, fixed entry points, standard curricula, and an expectation that all will progress through the experience at approximately the same rate. Imagine a new learning environment where spaces and boundaries are flexible, where there are moveable walls and furniture that provide for social space and group work. Imagine a place that is technology rich with integrated support services and extended hours and a community space or learning commons (a reconceived library).

In an Advertiser commentary on July 26, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described the "largest pot of discretionary funding for K-12 education reform in the history of the United States"- the Race to the Top fund at $4.35 billion. Duncan likened the fund as the education equivalent of the moon shot. The challenge is for states to compete for funding that will fundamentally reform K-12 education.

Now is the time to create new approaches to schooling, to construct schools in which students have open access to resources, where image, text and location are integrated, and where there is digital storytelling, simulations and virtual experience. In such places students are self-directed while collectively pursuing development of knowledge and skills, ideas and viewpoints are shared, projects and products are jointly pursued and developed, and problem solving, inquiry and reflection are part of the culture.

If we are to educate the digital natives we must engage them, allow them to collaborate, create flexible organizations, incorporate the use of digital tools, and include 21st century content (nanotechnology, bioethics, sustainability) and skills. It will be difficult for us to learn how to do things in new ways. It will require changes not only in K-12 classrooms, but also in how we prepare teachers, provide for professional development, and assess student achievement and school success. But we must re-imagine now — because it is their future at stake.

Christine Sorensen is the dean of the University of Hawaiçi-Mänoa’s College of Education.