iPad mini (Photo credit: patrick-allen)
My husband recently interviewed for a vacancy on our local school board. Among the questions the school administrators and other board members asked was, “With technology changing so rapidly, how can we adequately prepare our children for the future?”
My husband’s answer was simple: “As long as we focus on basic skills like reading, writing, math, critical thinking and deductive reasoning, our children will be ready for anything.”
The basics!? How boring is that, right? We want shiny new technologies! We want iPads! We want e-books!
Now my husband wasn’t saying that technology isn’t important and can’t play a role in our children’s education; he was simply suggesting that it shouldn’t define what we teach our children. And while I agree with him, it didn’t necessarily win over the hearts and minds of the interviewers who were undoubtedly looking for a school board candidate to fully embrace the district’s recently released technology plan
Wiring our children for tomorrow
A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project discussed the implications that a “hyper-connected” world will have on our future generations. As one would expect, the report states that there is both good and bad news when it comes to how our children’s minds will form and function. It also cites a need for our public education systems to change to help our children develop the skills needed to navigate in such a technology-driven world.
On the downside, the report mentions that so much technology may lead to children with a lack of patience and the need for instant answers and gratification. (I see this in my children and it can be downright frustrating at times.) Some believe our children will become shallow consumers of information without the ability to think deeply. While on the upside, they expect our children’s brains will be nimble, able to adapt to change quickly and they will be masters at multi-tasking.
As a parent, I’m seeing the technology changes in our schools. Computer labs, iPads in the classrooms, glogs (like blogs, but more design-oriented), FaceBook templates in homework assignments, and an interactive portal and electronic planners that allow me to see the status of my child’s homework, grades and attendance.
It’s a far cry from when I was in grade school where reports were written in pen or pencil, depending on the teacher, and report cards were handwritten. In college, laptops or PCs didn’t exist (let alone the Internet!). In my first ad agency job we typed radio and television scripts without correction tape—one mistake and you had to rip it out and start over! I’m glad those days are over. But I digress.
Skills for today, tomorrow…forever
Back to the future…or today. I’ve heard many discussions about whether e-books should be the new future for our students or whether we should have laptops or iPads for every child. I personally hate to see a future where the good old-fashioned pencil and paper ever goes out of style and our children no longer know how to write in cursive. But I know that technology will no doubt play an increasing role in our schools, our children’s education and our communities.
The experts in the Pew report make predictions about the desired “life skills” that will be necessary in 2020. They highlight:
“…public problem-solving through cooperative work—crowdsourcing and the like; the ability to search effectively for information online; the ability to distinguish the quality and veracity of online discoveries; the ability to synthesize, or combine facts and details from different sources into coherent narratives; the ability to concentrate; and the ability to distinguish between the signal and the noise as the information we’re exposed to gets bigger, and broader, and more plentiful.”
Sounds like a daunting list. Now I’m no expert in neuro-cognition, but this is how I’d boil down a list of desired life skills:
Future generations (wired or not) need to be able to speak and write using proper grammar, punctuation and spelling. They must be able to think critically and have a desire to learn. They need to look a person into the eye when speaking or listening to them. They should be patient and kind, have good manners, play fair, work cooperatively and share.
No doubt our children will use tools and technologies in their schooling and future careers that most of us never even dreamed of. But all the learning and those basic skills from kindergarten will still apply (and be necessary for success) whether they are in the sandbox or in the workplace.
At home, at work and in our communities, let’s not lose sight of the basics in our quest to embrace the technology.
