We don’t currently use any of the technology solutions that are out there well,” explained Director Berry in an exclusive interview with Wired.com. “Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — the modern methods of connectivity — we don’t take advantage of at all. Essentially, we’re missing a whole generation.

Yet too often, in the U.S. school system, teachers still rely on an Industrial Model of education. They deliver a lecture, the same one to all students.

It’s a one-way lecture. The teacher is the expert; the students are expected to absorb what the teacher says and repeat. And students are supposed to learn alone.

Teachers often feel that this is the only way to teach a large classroom of kids, and yet the classroom in Portugal shows that giving kids laptops can free the teacher to introduce a new way of learning that’s more natural for kids who have grown up digital at home.