Tom McHale’s article in Techlearning helpfully summarizes competing positions on Generation M (“media”), including recent work that suggests multitasking may not be an illusion after all. He also quotes one Generation M student on the usefulness of books: “I find that looking in a book first for research projects gives you more of a broad basis to start with,” says Liz Derr.

It’s refreshing that McHale avoids the typical all-or-nothing arguments about education and culture in which information technologies are either the answer or the devil. By the end, however, it’s clear that information technologies can be an answer, and a very powerful one at that. Meredith Fear, the “digital native” of the title, says of her Internet use for a research assignment that “[w]hat I make of it is entirely dependent on me and the effort I’m willing to put into it…. It’s a much, much more specialized and detailed level of thinking than I’ve been exposed to in any of the classes the school provides.”

Perhaps that specialized and detailed thinking could be done without information technologies. My own experience suggests it can be, and has been. The larger point, though, is that such thinking ought to be the rule in school and isn’t, and that information technologies allow digital natives access to the potential of real school no matter what obstacles the institution called “school” plants in their way.