.

America’s students are bored, unengaged and dropping out at alarming rates – but technology may be able to save the day. At least according to the panelists on a Samsung sponsored SXSW panel on Friday entitled: Asleep in the Classroom: A Wake Up Call from Tomorrow.

Boasting an impressive line-up of panelists – including James Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary for innovation at the U.S. Department of Education, Stacey Childress, the deputy director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scott Goldman, VP of the GRAMMY Foundation – the topic turned quickly to how creativity, innovation and technology could address the growing crisis in education.

“The state of education is at a tipping point,” noted Samsung’s CMO, Ralph Santana. “Technology can be an enabler in that change we all want to see happen in education,” he added.

But as some, like the infamous “Tiger mom” Amy Chua have posited, technology is also a driver for shorter attention spans, so which is it to be? Teacher’s helper or digital distracter?

The answer could be a bit of both, with panelists pointing out that all children are different and learn in their own unique way. Still, the challenge is to create schools that can cater to different types of children and don’t necessarily look like the old school schools most modern parents remember. The world has moved on, shouldn’t education have kept pace?

For instance, why not try to teach children subjects they find more challenging by using popular video games they enjoy as a driving force, like Halo for instance. Childress noted that the Gates foundation was actively engaging the Halo game developers to integrate algebra into games as a way to teach math.

It’s not even really a budgetary issue, with a whopping 16 billion tax dollar market for school products.

“We have the political will to fix education, now the question is how do we act fast in case the next administration doesn’t feel the same?” the panel asked.

Technology, it was widely agreed, could very well act as a teacher by bringing subject matter alive, but whether it will ever solve the problem of children getting bored at school remains to be seen. Smells like teen spirit to us.