21st Century Learning

Learning has changed so much since I was a kid. I mentioned in my last blog that my 6 year old daughter does a majority of her learning on a computer. Something which was unheard of when I was growing up. The only time that we used a computer was in the computer lab and that was a very rare occasion, usually twice a year, to type and print out writings for our portfolio. Forget about doing this in kindergarten, our experiences with computers did not start till 5th grade. Apparently that is when they decided that we were educated enough to work the computer and the dot-matrix printer. Education has really came along way, children in kindergarten are now behind if they don't know how to read and CATS testing now applies to 5 year olds. Me, being the one who wasn't taught the proper way to type till High School is now taking 90% of my college classes online. Education is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our growing world. In some ways I love that my daughter is so familiar and comfortable with using a computer, but on the same note I fear that she will not be taught in the same fashion that I was. In other words I do not want her to grow up depending on a computer for the answers. Just like the video said, we are training people for jobs and problems that don't yet exist. I know that our children are the future, and they need to adapt there learning to reflect this but I wonder sometimes if we are just pushing children to hard and it will have an adverse affect and children will get "burnt" out sooner.