Executive Perspective
Harnessing Kids’ Tech
Fascination
by DANIEL A.
DOMENECH
I
am intimidated by people like Alan November whose fingers glide over
their
computer keys and in the process go to
websites that offer the answers to all
the
questions that would otherwise go unanswered.
I do e-mail
and an
occasional PowerPoint presentation. I am
proud of the fact I now can do e-mail
on my
BlackBerry as well. That’s the extent of my prowess in technology.
Daniel A. Domenech
Jillian, my 17-year-old high school
senior, is another story. She sleeps with
her iPhone
under her pillow. If it were waterproof, I am sure that she would
bathe with
it. She does incredible things with her MacBook, from videos to post
on
YouTube to the content of her Facebook pages. Getting her to do her
homework
is a challenge, but getting her to turn
off her tech tools and go to sleep is an
even bigger
challenge.
This is the message that November, Keith
Krueger
and other presenters at our AASA Seattle
Summit in midsummer conveyed: Education
is missing
the boat by not taking advantage of the love affair between our kids
and
technology.
Personal Panic
I was a
young
superintendent
on Long Island,
N.Y., when, in 1978, I bought the first set of Commodore PET computers for our
schools. You could play Space Invaders on it, but mostly you had to learn to
program the darn thing to get it to do anything. High school courses focused
primarily on learning programming language. Few could afford to buy a Commodore
for home use and the power of the Internet had yet to be
unleashed.
