There exists an archetypical story from a generation prior to mine, of the perils and obstacles once faced by kids just trying to get to school. How many times have we heard the one about the five-mile walk, barefoot through the snow, to a one-room schoolhouse with no heat?
My version of this story, the one I’ll tell my son, will go like this…When I was a little girl, I traversed the almost two miles to school on my bicycle. On a good day, when the traffic cooperated, I could make it the whole way without hands. Once there, I found my desk, in my row, and followed along with the lessons the nuns would impart. We didn’t learn to read until we were in first grade, and we practiced writing using a fat pencil on wide-ruled paper.
Fast forward to college, to an era they call the late ‘80’s. Hair was permed, bags were large, and fashion was at a low-point (I cringe and chuckle at its resurgence). The requirements for papers were numerous in the Liberal Arts track, and my desk was ever littered with collections of handwritten assignments. I repeat, “handwritten”!
What did this mean? One implication was that it was necessary to complete the papers prior to the morning on which they were due, since there was still another step. The paper had to be typed. A typist had to be contracted and paid. Why not type it myself, since I had, after all, received a typewriter for high school graduation? Well, I didn’t know how to type. My high school offered either Latin or Typing, and it seemed that declension was my destiny – puella, puellae…
Personal computers did make their debut while I was in college. There was a room, in a building, on a side of campus where few sociology majors dared to tread – the COMPUTER SCIENCE lab! Rows of little boxes sat upon tables. These little boxes were called Macintosh Pluses and they sported 1 MB of memory (up from the prior version’s hefty 512k). It was here that I grasped my first mouse and used the MacPaint spraypaint tool – color: hot pink; design: polka dots. I marveled at the miracle of my creation as it emerged from the lab’s printer.
Two years later, at my first job in San Francisco, I taught myself to type (the upside of working in a perpetually empty art gallery). And in 2007, I once again found myself in that place where education and technology joined hands (Silverpoint – web solutions for school), this time in a much more successful pairing.
And my Kurt Vonnegutian advice for this generation? Study Latin and typing; one will help you read, one will help you write. Embrace technology but don’t forget to ride your bike. And remember, it’s not polite to laugh (out-loud) at your parents’ soon-to-be arcane nuggets of wisdom. Just send them a text to let them know you heard… :-)
{ Perhaps you educators (and parents) could share a story or two of how the kids in your life are coping with the double-helix of life and technology. Maybe more importantly, how are you navigating the terrain? }
My version of this story, the one I’ll tell my son, will go like this…When I was a little girl, I traversed the almost two miles to school on my bicycle. On a good day, when the traffic cooperated, I could make it the whole way without hands. Once there, I found my desk, in my row, and followed along with the lessons the nuns would impart. We didn’t learn to read until we were in first grade, and we practiced writing using a fat pencil on wide-ruled paper.
Fast forward to college, to an era they call the late ‘80’s. Hair was permed, bags were large, and fashion was at a low-point (I cringe and chuckle at its resurgence). The requirements for papers were numerous in the Liberal Arts track, and my desk was ever littered with collections of handwritten assignments. I repeat, “handwritten”!
What did this mean? One implication was that it was necessary to complete the papers prior to the morning on which they were due, since there was still another step. The paper had to be typed. A typist had to be contracted and paid. Why not type it myself, since I had, after all, received a typewriter for high school graduation? Well, I didn’t know how to type. My high school offered either Latin or Typing, and it seemed that declension was my destiny – puella, puellae…
Personal computers did make their debut while I was in college. There was a room, in a building, on a side of campus where few sociology majors dared to tread – the COMPUTER SCIENCE lab! Rows of little boxes sat upon tables. These little boxes were called Macintosh Pluses and they sported 1 MB of memory (up from the prior version’s hefty 512k). It was here that I grasped my first mouse and used the MacPaint spraypaint tool – color: hot pink; design: polka dots. I marveled at the miracle of my creation as it emerged from the lab’s printer.
Two years later, at my first job in San Francisco, I taught myself to type (the upside of working in a perpetually empty art gallery). And in 2007, I once again found myself in that place where education and technology joined hands (Silverpoint – web solutions for school), this time in a much more successful pairing.
And my Kurt Vonnegutian advice for this generation? Study Latin and typing; one will help you read, one will help you write. Embrace technology but don’t forget to ride your bike. And remember, it’s not polite to laugh (out-loud) at your parents’ soon-to-be arcane nuggets of wisdom. Just send them a text to let them know you heard… :-)
{ Perhaps you educators (and parents) could share a story or two of how the kids in your life are coping with the double-helix of life and technology. Maybe more importantly, how are you navigating the terrain? }