I remember how shocked I was the first time I realized my eighth graders couldn’t read or write in cursive. Since then, there have been many moments like that.
While my students have developed technical skills I couldn't have dreamed of in 8th grade, some of the skills we have always taken for granted have been lost.
Many of us had a good laugh at the Facebook videos of teenagers trying to figure out how to make a call on a rotary phone.
I am also amazed on a daily basis at how many of my students can’t tell time on an analog clock, even though these clocks are still in many classrooms across America.
Recently, a new one came to my attention -- looking up a word in the dictionary.
My students were looking up definitions for some vocab words on their Chromebooks. Another teacher’s student happened to be in my class that day. She didn’t have her Chromebook with her, so I handed her a dictionary. She sat there with the dictionary and her list of words, but I didn’t see her writing anything down. When I went over to check on her, I saw that her page was empty. When I asked her why, she said she couldn’t find the first word. That’s when I realized she didn’t understand that words are alphabetized, not just by the first letter, but by each letter after it.
I was dumbfounded, but when I thought about it, it made sense. They have always looked up words on an online dictionary. You just have to type the word in and there’s the definition. I guess alphabetizing isn’t a skill most of these kids will need to know. It’s not like anyone “files” in offices anymore. Most offices have now gone paperless.
These students have never known a time before computers. The skills they will need are much different than the skills most of us have grown up with. They will need to learn skills that we don’t even know about yet. I’m interested to see what other skills will fall by the wayside and be deemed “ancient” in the next few years.
While my students have developed technical skills I couldn't have dreamed of in 8th grade, some of the skills we have always taken for granted have been lost.
Many of us had a good laugh at the Facebook videos of teenagers trying to figure out how to make a call on a rotary phone.
I am also amazed on a daily basis at how many of my students can’t tell time on an analog clock, even though these clocks are still in many classrooms across America.
Recently, a new one came to my attention -- looking up a word in the dictionary.
My students were looking up definitions for some vocab words on their Chromebooks. Another teacher’s student happened to be in my class that day. She didn’t have her Chromebook with her, so I handed her a dictionary. She sat there with the dictionary and her list of words, but I didn’t see her writing anything down. When I went over to check on her, I saw that her page was empty. When I asked her why, she said she couldn’t find the first word. That’s when I realized she didn’t understand that words are alphabetized, not just by the first letter, but by each letter after it.
I was dumbfounded, but when I thought about it, it made sense. They have always looked up words on an online dictionary. You just have to type the word in and there’s the definition. I guess alphabetizing isn’t a skill most of these kids will need to know. It’s not like anyone “files” in offices anymore. Most offices have now gone paperless.
These students have never known a time before computers. The skills they will need are much different than the skills most of us have grown up with. They will need to learn skills that we don’t even know about yet. I’m interested to see what other skills will fall by the wayside and be deemed “ancient” in the next few years.