[LDale]

While the author believes that "the ease, access, convenience and lower cost [offered by online education] appeals to people just about everywhere" the huge - giant - glaring omission here is that education is not so much about enjoyment, ease, or cost as it is about developing your core competencies, content knowledge, and cognitive development - it must, in a word, work.

And, it doesn't.

I'll be quick to change my tune when online education proves itself effective - but right now online k12 education is failing miserably all around the country despite great promises and powerful support(e.g. there are current 16 online k12 charter schools in Pennsylvania getting terrible results).

This isn't a field in which innovators are allowed to fail for a year until they find appropriate answers to their problems - that year of failing is a year of their students failing to advance. There is no stomach from teachers, administrators, or parents for such bumbling - nor should there be.

[tarunmitra]

I absolutely agree with your concerns. However there are very high number if success stories indicating that technology is the only solution. Very large scale adoption of services like Google apps for education, Edmodo, BetterLessons and Desire2Learn are the examples.

[LDale]

They are strong education tools, no doubt - but note that each of them is a support technology for traditional education, not a replacement for it. These success stories could not succeed (or usefully exist) without a well established traditional education system.

These are also not the sort of tools the article here is discussing (which instead posits that the future of education will be the replacement of traditional flesh-and-blood education with digital education platforms - which will fail).