Personal Learning Networks

From our first reading assignment for this week, three salient collocations caught my eye: connecting technologies; working together; and classrooms built around deep inquiry. With the Singularity (see Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near") and its exponential change quickly approaching our world, I believe that the era of the solitary learner is fast becoming irrelevant.

However, for me the key collocation is "classrooms built around deep inquiry." If our classrooms use the latest "connecting technologies" and all the students "work together," but the "deep inquiry" piece is missing, might the whole process risk being like the farmer using his Mercedes to deliver chaff to market?

Here, I am also reminded of Martin Luther King's words: " I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their of their character." As teachers, should we not concentrate more on the content of our inquiry rather than on the color of our technology?