What it means to be educated

In Growing up with Google--What it Means to Education [Emerging Technologies for Learning – Volume 3 (2008)], Diana G. Oblinger writes the following:

"Learners need skills that go far beyond reading, memorisation and communication. Educational institutions have an obligation to help students cultivate those skills that learners have the most difficulty attaining on their own, such as:
1. judgement, or the ability to distinguish the reliable from unreliable information
2. synthesis, or the capacity to follow the longer argument or narrative across multiple modalities
3. research, or the activity of searching, discovering, and disseminating relevant information in a credible manner
4. practice, or the opportunity to learn-by-doing within authentic disciplinary communities
5. negotiation, or the flexibility to work across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to generate innovative, alternative solutions."

Is there a single one of those five points that wouldn't have been equally relevant in Renaissance Italy? The technology may have changed, but the principles of true education remain the same.

Gordon Dale