Technology and Youth
Tonight was unpack your backpack night at my 8yr old’s elementary school. The school is 3 years old, and I must say I was very impressed with the level of technology integration. They had high resolution projectors hooked up to desktop PCs in all the classrooms. The teachers all have access to the web, and they can pull in any lesson plan in real time, save it locally and allow the students to interact with the lesson plans VIA the in-class computer equipment.
The gymnasium had rubber floors, sinks and lockers in the actual classrooms, I was very impressed. This school is light years ahead of what I had when I was in school.
The thing that stood out to me the most was this, they took all the parents into the gym for a “parent orientation”, they started off the presentation with a video. The video was a “Did you know?”, very similar to the Socialnomics videos I’ve mentioned alot here on this blog and also in the Video section of this web site. They mention that the technologies they learn in their first year of college will be obsolete by their 3rd year, and essentially they’ll graduate with outdated knowledge. This is all because of the internet and technological advances, and yes, dare I say…social media. They told us you can choose to not like technology, but your children have to and will learn it, technology is our present and future. I thought was really cool to see the public school pushing this information onto the parents, trying to get them involved and showing that video to kind of jar people a bit.
What disappointed me was that he wasn’t using PowerPoint right, which told me he didn’t know how to use it, he said he basically refused to sign up for FaceBook and the video I mentioned was actually 2 years old. Now you might think 2 years isn’t bad, but in the terms of technology thats like 15. Things change so fast, and the web is so fast to change, that our schools can’t even keep up. Something has got to change somewhere, you’ve got a guy pushing technology, that doesn’t fully endorse or understand it. Maybe I’m preying on the little semantics of things, but I don’t think so.
Let me reiterate my overall point with this post, I’m impressed and pleased to see the level of technology use at the school, but I’m disappointed in their overall view of it. That makes me think about the Quad Cities, are businesses around here keeping up? In the video Social Media Revolution by Socialnomics, they state that the ROI of Social Media is that your business will still exist in 5 years. Isn’t incredible to think that something that wasn’t even that popular 5 years ago could dictate whether or not your business will survive in another 5? A client said me to the other day “I think all this FaceBook stuff is just a lot of fluff”. Well you might think that, but its not fluff, its not a fad, the web is here to stay and Social Media is the next generation of it, its more than the web, like the video says its a “Fundmental shift in the way we communicate”. I believe that, not because I make money on implementing web sites and social media marketing, but because I truly believe thats where things are going…and rapidly. We have to learn to stay ahead of the curve, we have to keep up, we have to stay ahead as a country, and as individual. What are your kids being taught? What is your business doing? Are we supporting the right things? Do you engage your children and your business in the tides of change? All very interesting questions we even more interesting answers.