Some people would be familiar with how much I thrive on change and development.  I get energised by thinking about and playing with the potential of new ideas, new technologies and newer ways of doing necessary and valuable things.  Thus, I love the idea of disruptive technologies.  Wikipedia says of this phenomenon:

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.

In business, a disruptive technology changes a market by offering an alternative product that shifts the way consumers think about the entire market.  Mobile phones have done this to fixed line telephony for example.  Although the term is commercial in origin, it has fascinating application to learning and especially the art and practice of teaching.  Wikipedia would be one such technology.  Consider this:

Traditional teaching has a model of information exchange that is tightly controlled and has the teacher as the centre and controller of these exchanges.  Simultaneously the teacher is the information authority (and sometimes sole authority).  Drop the WWW and wikipedia into this paradigm and you have a disruptive technology.  If the consumer’s (student’s) understanding of information exchange is radically altered by universal and instant access, so too is their understanding of the role of a teacher.

Social networking, class wikis and blogs, content creation and publication have all had the same disruptive effect on schools and classrooms. 

 As in business, we engage with the technology, we innovate or we become irrelevant.  As in business, we have to know our tools and our students or we will lose both.