New Technology

I was helping a 3rd grade student at an after school program the other day and she said she needed to go to the computer lab to make a powerpoint presentation. I was a little blown away that a 3rd grader would have to make a powerpoint presentation in one of her classes but it was not stretching my mind too far. We started working and she dowloaded a sound clip from her e-mail that she pulled up and added it to her powerpoint. That is when I was trully baffled. I had no idea what to think. I then proceded to ask her how she did it and she went step-by-step with me of how she learned to put sound clips in her powerpoint presentations. When I was in third grade, hunt and peck was definitely around and powerpoint, internet, or e-mail was no where in sight. She has successfully mastered all three of them. I do not even know why I went in the computer lab to help her because she was the one teaching me! Anyway, I wanted to tell you that story to let you see how much technology has changed since I was in school. It is really amazing the programs children are learning at such an early age now. I went in one school where first graders were learning how to type poems on Microsoft Word. Students are learning more about the internet, and ways to navigate it than ever before. There are now SmartBoards in classrooms where projectors used to be. Now teachers can be thousands of miles apart from their students and still teach over the internet. There are so many things that are changing that I can not keep up with them. If i had all of those technologies when I was in primary school, I can not fathom where I would be now. If this is how far we have reached in ten years, then I can not imagine how much more the technology is going to grow in the next few years.