One Small Step for Students, One Giant Leap for our School! (Part 1/3)

Walk with me down memory lane, just for a few paragraphs before we talk about the future of schooling. My anecdotes will no doubt trigger a few of your own gems from the not-too-distant past. (Feel free to share in the comment section!)

Back to the Paper-on-Earth '80s

During all my years at school I never worked on a computer. The closest I came to using technology was learning how to type ... and use correction tape. I managed 165 words/minute, strewn with errors! As students at teachers college we were given a once-off opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the basic components (mouse, keyboard, monitor, floppy disk, etc.), but I do not recall mastering any software or programs. I did learn how to make copies using a Gestetner duplicator though! And I have vague memories of worrying over my parents regarding how they were going to keep up with all the new technology. :-)

In the Dial-up-to-the-Cloud '90s

During the first few years of my professional life, computers started appearing in school libraries where one could access information through CD-ROMS. Most of us thought our elderly 7th grade LA teacher was an alien from cyberspace (the term wasn't coined back then) when she one day proudly announced that her students had successfully emailed their peers in England. We thought she was weird. We obviously understood very little of what was happening in the world. In the mid-nineties I purchased my first black and white DOS-operating computer and replaced it a few years later for one with an amazing color monitor! Transitioning from Coral WordPerfect to Microsoft Word was very hard! The Internet was a luxury few of us could afford in South Africa and when I finally hooked up via a dial-up modem, I did so sparingly and only stayed on long enough to download content to read offline. 

Through Y2K, to Cyberspace ... and Beyond!

When we came to Taiwan in the early 2000s I was amazed at the ease of Internet access. Our family purchased a brand new CRT computer and even used it to watch DVDs! I would not own a laptop until much, much later, let alone a SmartPhone. Other new gimmicks included burning CDs and storing data on a 256 megabyte thumb drive for which I paid about US$100. I cannot help but chuckle when I reflect on these experiences. The world has changed so much over the last thirty years, but we're told that we ain't seen nothing yet. Professor Klaus Schwab's recent book The Fourth Industrial Revolution seeks to prepare society for deep technological shifts that are bound to happen over the next decade. As a father and an educator, I believe we have a moral obligation to equip our children and students to not only engage with this new world, but to dynamically impact it. With the next post I want to show how our school has gone about this task.