Happy New Year!

Its been a while since my last post... Got busy with the holidays and such just like everyone else I'm sure. Anyway, I thought I'd point everyone to the Mindset list from Beloit College. Its a list for the teachers at Beloit to help them understand the incoming freshman class for each year. Essentially it just lists things that they've never known. One of my favorites, coming from 60lbs PCs with green monochrome screens, was number 20 this year, which read "Computers have always fit in their backpacks." Anyway, here's the link to the list:

http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/

Some of this has left me thinking of the state of our educational system again. Or at least the challenges that it faces. What amuses me is that teachers have started to make plans for classes to teach incoming students how to use the internet to find information. These are kids that have had computers and the internet all their lives! You would expect they would know how to use these resources but it turns out just like my generation had GI Joe and Barbie, this generation has computers. They're toys, not ways to get information. As much as I've harped on the lack of reading books and newspapers in today's society I've always secretly hoped that the reading had simply moved onto the internet... apparently I was wrong.

Any thoughts? No Child Left Behind had the right intentions but was probably one of the worst things to happen to education in years. There's got to be a better way... Lets try to find it.

Have a great day!