What Can We Learn from Calvinball?

Shift Happens

My first reaction to the Fisch video, "Did you Know?" was one of bewilderment. I thought to myself,
"this is all about survival of the fittest, ya know?" (no pun intended there with the tag question). But, the scary part with this video is the "fittest" are not us humans anymore. We're competing with computers (well, I'm using one right now so the two of us are actually collaborating) or at least we're competing with technology. Actually, as the shift is happening right under our feet, we're just trying to stay in step with technology.

How do we do that? How do we prepare students for jobs, as Fisch stated, that don't even exist yet?! I think we need to actually take a step back for a second here and realize that, we've been doing it all along. When I graduated from high school, I didn't know how to use Google. I was prepared with skills used B.G. I think some of those skills are still valid today. I was taught problem solving skills... instead of googling something, I had to ehem, look it up in the card catalog and dare I say it, take out a BOOK! <-- check out a cheeky video on books) I was taught good communication skills and instead of googling directions to a new place, I called the location, spoke with a human and wrote the information down (with a pen and piece of paper, not with a cell phone!).

My point is, while it's evident from the numerous facts in this video that we need to seriously consider the shifting and transferring of where and how we lead our students into the 21st century, we do not need to throw useful skills out with yesterday's paper. Duh! Recycle them! Okay, that was cheesy but in all seriousness, we can do just that and still feel confident our students will survive. Perhaps they'll be the fittest?

I'm not scared about this shift and I don't think any educator should be. I'd be willing to bet our government is scared... why else would they have passed NCLB? Why else is NJ undergoing a HS redesign? America is not at the top of the list... and I don't think it's because educators aren't prepared for this shift. In fact, how is NCLB going to help us with this shift? I don't think it will...