The history of encyclopedia is extremely illustrative for the development of education.
Just think about it:
The history of encyclopedia:
Printed encyclopedia (Britannica) >> electronic encyclopedia (Encarta) >> dynamic Web encyclopedia (Wikipedia and vertical web search engines) .
The history-in-the-making of education:
Conventional schools >> online education >> 5iX: interactive, intuitive, intelligent, integrated, and individualized learning (Xuexi 学习）
The analogy is much deeper than the surface. The more you think about the concepts and the technological makeup involved, the closer the analogy would appear.
The course of the history is inevitable. One can be a pioneer in the new education. But there is no reservation of a reward for the pioneer. The pioneer has a chance to make the history, but regardless of the success of the pioneer and how important a role it will play in the new education, we should be happy to just watch the history being made.
On the other hand, education is not all like Encyclopedia.
The replacement of the printed encyclopedia by electronic Encyclopedia was nearly a sweeping replacement, and all facts indicate that the subsequent replacement of the electronic Encyclopedia by the dynamic Web Encyclopedia is also going to be sweeping. But I don’t believe the conventional schools will ever be completely replaced by any other new form. What 5iX will bring to the world is a new and more efficient way to learn knowledge (or teaching knowledge if you look at from a teacher’s point of view). Whether it will become just one of the many small tools in education’s great toolbox, or an instrument to facilitate historical changes is not really in our hands.