While reading this article, I had the undeniable urge to watch a clip of the insult-comic dog Triumph hamming it up with some Star Wars fanatics. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't enable us to embed videos right here into the blogging field, so I'll have to simply post a link. That's very low-tech, of you blogger...
Now, onto the issue of the actual iKids we're to teach everyday.
It's clear that this world we've created for ourselves is vastly different than the world we went to school in. It's telling that kids know how to better and more deeply respond to classic literature via electronic devices than with pen and ink. This could just be the fact of the matter, and if so, teachers need to get on board. What bothers me, still, is how fast it all has happened, so much so that teachers and administrators have had no say in the process. Instead, as McHugh mentions, teachers "are scrambling to figure out how to use these same tools and information-distribution techniques to reach and excite young minds." Indeed, we are scrambling, and what's scary is that as soon as we get on top of something -- say incorporating the use of wikis or Flickr in the classroom -- we will already be 5 steps behind again, given simply how fast new technology is being developed and marketed. Who's to say that in 10 years -- or even half that time -- wikis will still be relevant? And the scariest thought of all is that our kids are going to be lost in this constant shift "forward," constantly dishing out the dough to keep up with the hot new tech-items, with their teachers always several steps behind. And since it's obviously OK for new technology to develop at breakneck speed, and OK for our kids to get it without their parents testing it out and learning about it ahead of time, it seems only too easy to say educators are no longer speaking kids' "language," as McHugh's quotes Ryan Ritz to say.
Never in history has the paradigm shifted so quickly; so quickly, in fact, that parents can't even communicate with their children, and educators can't begin to connect with their students. In the case of our ecology, scientists are alarmed at the quick shift in global temperature. Shouldn't we be just as concerned, if not more, when our kids are speeding off into the future without us, and without the safeguard of adult guidance? Shouldn't it bother us just a little when our schools are too busy learning technology for themselves to have the time or "withitness" to give our kids a more trustworthy future?
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