Get on the Bus

I have been sitting in front of a computer for the better part of most days for the past 16 years. What started out as a fear, gradually moved to curiosity and fascination, and then turned into a career and a commitment. While many people are still not sure this "thing" is best for educating anyone, especially our youngest students, we have to concede the cliché that it isn't going away any time soon. Perhaps the most detrimental truth in all of this is so few took it seriously in the early stages. The wave of the hand and the shushing sound dismissed anyone who said it "might be here to stay and change all our lives." After all, we just thought it was a great new way to track and extract information, and yes, play games (remember “Centipede?”).

Who knew it would allow us to call and SEE other people! Well, many things about this sophisticated tool have gone awry and we have no one to blame but ourselves really. After all, we hear doomsayers tell us the sky is falling (or suffering irreparable pollution) and when the oxygen content is so low we are all wheezing, who will have the nerve to wave their hands and say, "But I didn't know...!"  We have seen the machine, the technology, the potential...we have watched it be harnessed, utilized, made stronger, better, and more remarkable. We are talking statues and monuments to immortalize Steve Jobs as the single greatest visionary of our time.

No question it is overdue for all of us to invest in how to use this properly, with great wisdom, and by embracing it instead of trying to pretend we can go back to "earlier times" (you know, like when there weren't computers in every house and the Amazon was only a region and a river, and Q was a misunderstood and little used letter instead of a mega-million shopping network). It is pretty much either get on the bus or go back to the mountains. Me? I really want to be at the front of that bus myself. Heck, if I had the skills I would want the commercial driver's license. All aboard!