Oh Shift!

In our T.E.A.M. survey (you can't imagine know how much I love filling out surveys), it was asked how I felt after watching "Did You Know 2.0" on YouTube. I watched it, and I felt many emotions. I was surprised with predictions like China being the number one English speaking country in 10 years (but whether that is based on total population or a relative percentage I don't know), and how today's learners will have 10 to 14 jobs by their 38th birthday. I guess gone are the days of working in the same job for 20 or 30 years. Our economic environment has changed greatly, and it seems to be moving faster than ever.
The video demonstrates how powerful the Internet is as a medium to reach people, as a resource for children of all ages.

Education has always meant to prepare students for the world they would soon inherit. They are the policy and decision makers of tomorrow, and each day we give to them we do truly build and invest in our futures. How can we prepare our students today for the challenges of tomorrow without knowing what will make them "21st Century Literate?" How can we integrate skills into our curriculum that will be relevant to jobs that do not exist yet? I guess the fact that many of us are thinking about this helps plant the seed of educational reform to some extent. Call it a subconscious pedagogical awareness of sorts.

The most powerful quote to me was Albert Einstein's:

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

My own daughter, who is not even two, knows the computer as a source of information. She enjoys watching her favorite Disney channel characters singing and dancing using online video sites like Youtube. She doesn't fear technology - she embraces it. She will grow up in a world - an on demand world where information is all around her. My hope is that she will be able to differentiate the useful from the useless. I also hope that she will guide the wave of knowledge and not be swept up by it.