Vicki Davis: Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts

Teaching today's students how to connect to the "digital" world is to give them a head start on the world of tomorrow. Ms. Davis spoke of the now old-fashioned pencil and paper. The students going into the digital jobs of the future, which increasingly do not require pen and paper, may one day not even know what they are! They may be put into a museum for people to "Ooh" and "Aah" over! Although I do agree that our students need to be prepared for the innovative future, as a physical education major, I do worry about the sedentary life it will most assuredly bring with it. A scene from the movie, Wall-E, pops into my mind here. In the scene, the overweight and sedentary humans, who get from place to place on personal transporters, need only hit a button to receive anything they wish. Although fanciful, it still made me uneasy to see it.
In support of Ms. Davis's program, I think technology can be a wonderful tool. In the computer elective class I taught, one project we did was a virtual road trip in which the students "visited" a place in the Continental United States. Because it was a road trip, they had to learn about car rentals, fuel tank capacity and gas mileage, hotel rates, and how much a minor repair on their car might cost. It was exciting to see their interest and excitement and watch them learn how they could use technology for research and fun. Ms. Davis goes so much farther with her class. It was very inspiring to see her students on the cutting edge of classroom technology. Today classrooms all over the world can be hard-wired together. As a result, I can see extraordinary possibilities for our future.