Module 5B

Hi

After reading chapter 7 on exploring microworlds, I went to the resource websites assigned to do some exploring for myself.  I registered in the tappedin site and actually joined a group for special ed students which is what I do for a living.  There were so many places and links to explore that I could have spent many more hours than I did.  I also checked out Moose crossing and thought to myself that some of the kids at my school would have a ball with this activity.  Creating their own pets or designing their dream bedroom came to my mind.  Because I work in an innercity school, most of this creating would be a fantasy for them.  I see them designing their own bedrooms with a basketball court inside of it and a stage for doing kareoke.    As you got older, I think, you may have remember in school creating this virtual bedroom or playroom and perhaps work toward being able to attain it.  You may go into engineering or architecture so that you could learn to do this professionally for a living.  There are so many practical applications to these learning spaces that I am surprised that more schools are not using them as a teaching tool on a regular basis.  I wonder  in 20 years, when my children's children are in school, how they will be learning and playing.  Will there even be a "school" for them to go to?  I can see them doing science experiments in virtual labs and creating their wardrobes on a site and them e-mailing it to a dressmaker to make up with all of the sizes and shapes on the computer model.  The interactive physics site would be fabulous, especially for boys, since even in the kindergarten class they mimic car crashes using big blocks to build ramps and then letting the cars fly down these ramps and crash into lego buildings that they have created at the bottom of the ramp.  Right now kids are all about the videogames and I have to say that they are bigger and better quality every year.  Even the new trend of WEE games where you stand up in your living room and interactively play tennis or baseball using your T. V. screen, provide a lot of fun and hand eye coordination.  At least you get up off the couch and physcially move around so that impresses me.

I have to ask though, will all of this technology come at a cost to our children?  When I was a child, The Jetsons was a cartoon about a family living in the future.  Robots did the housework, George went to work in a spaceship, meals were prepared and just floated to you and it seemed too idealistic.  We dreamed about what living in a world like that would be like.  What do children today dream about today when they think ahead to what the world will be like when they are 20 or 30 years older?  Virtual hospitals where you diagnose your own diseases, virtual pharmacies where you create your own perscription....something to think about eh????

Carol