Futurelab has launched Power League, a free online resource for schools which supports pupils of all ages to explore, debate and discuss any topic in a fun and easy way.

Power League ... enables the user to rank and display group opinions on any issue across the entire curriculum.

Power League lets you ask tough questions, stimulates debate and creates a visual league table based on votes gathered across your group.

Here's a sample of questions leagues address:

1. Discuss and debate what might be the most important invention in the world - ever.

2. Your school is being redesigned - what are the most important factors to consider?Your school is being redesigned - what are the most important factors to consider?

3. Who would you like to be the most powerful person in the world?

I especially like the second question: What factors should be considered in redesigning your school?

What above all do you want to see in your school now, by 2010, or by 2015? Do you want the design to include fewer students? More students assigned to your instruction? Less heterogeneous aggregating of students? More one-on-one learning? Fewer teachers? More self-directed electronic learning? Less bricks-and-morter schooling , shorter school day, and more independent learning?

What's your top priority feature in your school of the future?

Futurelabs has asked for your opinion and has provided a venue to receive your ideas. Please take them seriously, and offer your considered thoughts.

In short, I think educators should include more state-of-the-art hardware and software products and processes from a growing commercial education market that already exists globally in its infancy for independent and one-on-one learning in and out of schools.

This market will result in a redistribution of who learns what, when, and where among conventional preschool through high school students. This redistribution, in large part, will change who people consider teachers and what teachers do to earn that title. More students will arrive in PK knowing how to read, write, handle math and science computations at conventional 1st through 3rd grade levels than to date, but (based on data over the past 40 years) conventional school classroom curricula and teaching will not change much or fast enough to accommodate them at their learning rates.

What do you want in your school? Start your own power (opinion does not = power!) league with your own topic, or join an existing league, and then debate and vote.

A caution: Opinions plus $3.50 will get you a cup of coffee in some, but not in all places.

It's astonishing that opinions appear to outnumber facts and logic in so many school curricula and practices.

Hmm. Now there's an interesting lit research topic to review in a term paper. I hope that all teacher prep students and professors will tackle that topic.

Thanks, FutureLab for your questions.

Tableteers, did you notice the student using a Tablet PC in one of the FutureLab photos?

Tablet PC Education Blog