If someone from a century ago were suddenly transported into today’s home, they would be confounded by the way that technology has transformed it. The teen-ager IMing friends, a college student visiting the online world Second Life or dad checking his work e-mail would all seem bizarre and alien. But they’d probably feel pretty much at home in a school classroom: The teacher’s still up front, talking to students in desks who are writing notes with pencil and paper. Bridging the gap between those two worlds — the dynamic, changing technology children use at home and the relatively unchanged classroom — is the subject of a conference at Duke this weekend called “The Future of Learning.� The conference will explore some of the possibilities that the digital world has to offer educators and students, says Cathy Davidson, interim director of Duke’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and an event organizer. Currently, she says, there’s a divide between the way that students raised with the Internet use technology in informal learning — video games and online communities — and the relatively unchanged format of formal learning at school, she said.

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