Out of Touch

Two weekends ago, I was watching an interview with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. I found the most interesting portion of the discussion about cyber-warfare. One rhetorical question they advanced during the interview was, At what point of cyber-warfare does the destruction become significant enough to warrant actual warfare?

Twenty minutes later, I was breaking up a full-on, head-lock brawl between my six-year-old and my ten-year-old because the former destroyed the latter’s much-loved architectural tower he had build in a shared Minecraft world.

It seems to me that any online interaction that stirs strong emotion (such as anger or love or inspiration or trust) always leads back to face-to-face interaction. It also seems that the more significant the problem to be solved, the more likely people will meet face-to-face in solving the problem. What implications does this have for education?

At what point are problems that we are trying to solve in education significant enough to warrant face-to-face interaction? At what point is the innovation exciting enough to warrant a face-to-face workshop or summit? At what point is a student's remedial-need significant enough to warrant face-to-face time?