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.
Muslim Academy on 13 Sep 12The annual anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11 passed with much fanfare as it has been passing for last ten years. Taking stock of things as an ordinary US citizen, you will feel that as an individual, you have lost much and as a country, the United States has lost even more than you do. The first blow that the incident of 9/1 caused was restrictions on the personal freedoms specifically if you belong to Muslim and Indian community, having your surname or first name sounding Muhammad, Mahmood or Ahmad. You go through constant hassles and mental torture of eves dropping by the security agency and then bickering and slander by the all and sundry as if you are a walking anathema in the United States. Thought this is not common and widespread, yet it is a fact that several Asian and Middle Eastern Muslims have testified. The second fallout is decrease in tolerance and misuse of the freedom of expression. Again the most of the victims are Muslims even though one has been living in the United States for decades. A home to so many freedom loving persons, the United States is no more considered a safe haven for several migrant Muslim communities. They are no more tolerated in the same way as they used to enjoy freedom before the 9/11 and second is attacks that should be called vicious attacks like the fellow Terry Jones and recently filming against Islam and Prophet [PBUH] are quite on the rise. It is sheer misuse of freedom of expression that different anti-Islamic demagogues are spitting their venom using social media and other platforms and creating physical violence. The consequence is that the Americans specifically ordinary Americans are becoming targets of the ensuring violence as it has happened in Libya and Egypt the other day.
