Scene at our house last night. Oldest girl is at the computer writing a paper with her textbook in her lap.
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| Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
"I really wish my textbook had a control F feature," she sighed.
What's that, I wondered but didn't say.
The Professor laughed. Ah, I thought, he is hipper than I am.
"It does," he said. "It's called the index and you find it in the back of the book." Okay so maybe he isn't hipper after all.
Sometimes we like to amuse ourselves by telling the children stories about the bad old days when we did homework
- without computers
- with typewriters
- and white out
- or pencils and pens and (heaven forbid) legible cursive writing
- and dictionaries
- and calculators that only added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided
- and logarithm charts
- and microfilche
- and books and libraries
- and card catalogues
They find this amazing and lame and it reinforces their impressions that we really are ancient and out of touch.
Which is exactly how I viewed my parents. My mom went to school in a one room country schoolhouse. My dad was president of his high school slide rule club. And they both walked uphill, 5 miles, both ways, in the snow, everyday to get to school.
So what I wonder is what changes will my kids be telling their kids about?
- lectures with powerpoint
- having to hand write exams
If you have any ideas what our kids will complain about to their kids, leave a comment.
And all of my books were on this thing called an i-pad. It was a whole inch thick and was about 7x10 inches square. You had to touch it to make the pages turn!
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