A few months ago I was at a leadership training in Phoenix. We were staying at the Franciscan Renewal Center which is located in a really nice part of town. During our lunch break a few of us went for a walk in the neighborhood. We met a wonderful retired couple that peppered us with questions about the state of education. They wondered why kids these days, at least in their experience, didn't know math facts or history dates. Basically, they wondered why kids weren't learning the same stuff in the same way that they did. They had a little bit of a paradigm shift when I brought up the fact that kids are growing up in a totally different world than they did. It's a completely different world than I grew up in.
In his article in the Virginia Journal of Education, David Webb reminds us that the internet has changed everything. Kids haven't ever had to look up information without the internet. They can, from their cell phones, look up any information that they might need. They don't have to go to the library to do research. They don't have to know the Dewey decimal system. They can find any information that they want in 5 seconds. They have no reference for a world without technology. To 'demonize the things they think are normal' only creates a wall between us and them.
If you want to connect with kids, it isn't going to work to tell them that, ahem, "When I grew up we had to get our information from the encyclopedia." They don't care. We didn't care that our grandparents had to walk uphill both ways to school. It is us to embrace, or at the very least, understand what they are into and the world they are growing up in.
In his article in the Virginia Journal of Education, David Webb reminds us that the internet has changed everything. Kids haven't ever had to look up information without the internet. They can, from their cell phones, look up any information that they might need. They don't have to go to the library to do research. They don't have to know the Dewey decimal system. They can find any information that they want in 5 seconds. They have no reference for a world without technology. To 'demonize the things they think are normal' only creates a wall between us and them.
If you want to connect with kids, it isn't going to work to tell them that, ahem, "When I grew up we had to get our information from the encyclopedia." They don't care. We didn't care that our grandparents had to walk uphill both ways to school. It is us to embrace, or at the very least, understand what they are into and the world they are growing up in.
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/25031050@N06/4442939883">cell phone baby</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>