First and foremost, it is important to remember that technology in one way is always changing and in other ways has not changed in years... yes processing speed and memory capacities are getting upped every day, but the way that we look at and use technology for teaching has been gradually shifting for a long time now.
Granted, the Internet has greatly affected the way that people gather, understand and distribute information but these are all just new ways of doing old systems! E-mail replaced what is now called 'snail mail,' library card catalogs have been replaced with database searches and Google searches streamlined the time honored process of research in formation is something called books. Outlook and Google Calendar have replaced day planners.
The information age refers to the increased access to information, it really should be called the Access age (but then we would have to pay Bill Gates royalties) because the information that already exists is more readily accessible and the common person has greater access to systems that can understand, reorganize and distribute information. Youtube allows everyone to do what used to be only done exclusively by TV networks. Social networks are simply a supped up pen-pall system. And educational portals are just online lesson plans that can be displayed in different ways.
I can't say if this is a good thing or a bad thing, just that this is the way that things are right now. Almost all of the new systems that are coming out for education just do what other things have done in the past, they just do them more efficiently, more bells and whistles might have been added but chances are there is nothing revolutionary about these products. But what can be revolutionary is the way that these things are used to teach.
