It happened again today. I saw a young couple eating together, with their heads down, phones in respective hands. They did not engage in any actual human-to-human correspondence, connection, or eye contact whatsoever. I did, however, overhear a whole lot of dings and beeps from their phones.

Is this what we've come to? Are the connections we make through our devices real? Do they empower us to actually gain new perspectives and make real, human-centered connections?

As we've pumped our schools and classrooms full of devices, have we unintentionally disconnected our children from one another?

The ease with which our world digitally connects today is worrisome. Those of us in the education community must consider it critically. We need to harness the power of physical space within our learning institutions-and design those spaces so that they can foment real, rewarding connections among students and teachers.