http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm1sCsl2MQY
Mr. Winkle, after waking from a 100 year nap, is shocked to find a world full of the unfamiliar. The thing is, only Mr. Winkle finds this new world odd. Everyone else is used to the computers, phones, machines, and all the other technology. The world to which Mr. Winkle awoke is fast paced, complicated, and everything is much more in depth. This makes Mr. Winkle feel ill, so he seeks solace inside something that reminds him of the 100 year old past he was so fond of... a school. There are lectures with notes and nothing more, and Mr. Winkle is content once again. He loves the school, but the students inside feel like Mr. Winkle did when he first awoke- nauseated.
It seems to me as though Mr. Winkle and the students should switch places. The students, who have been awake during Mr. Winkle's 100 year nap have grown along with the technology, where as Mr. Winkle got left behind from it. If we as educators of the future, do not allow students to grow with the way our world is growing (deeper and deeper into technology, that is) we deprive them of the future. We are holding students in the past, which is why they are slipping further and further behind than students in other parts of the world. Perhaps Mr. Winkle should be in school, and the students should be out in the world instead... It is as if Mr. Winkle and the school program both have taken 100 year naps, and school has yet to awaken.
The world in which we live today requires students to be able to continue their learning even after they leave school. It is less about what you leave school with now, and more about all of the doors you can open all by yourself. If we as teachers do not give the students the keys to open these doors, they will never succeed. We must provide them with the tools now necessary to make it in the 21st century- tools of technology. We are calling students our "future" but not even allowing to live up to that title, because they are refused the use of technology as an education tool.
