Me: what did you do at school today?
Son: Learned about the world using Google Earth.
Well, I really hadn’t expected that answer.
In the video above, Lisa Guernsey talks about how dealing with an iPad is affecting young children at a TEDxMidAtlantic meeting. Lisa directs the Early Education Initiative of the New America Foundation and she aims to elevate the dialogue about early childhood education.
But now back to my son. If you think about that for a moment it’s quite staggering. My son is 5 years old and in his first year of school. When I was 5 I can’t imagine I even knew what an atlas was and maybe I didn’t know the world existed outside my town, let alone my country.
So after dinner, we took a virtual trip up and around the top of Mount Everest. We also visited Ayers Rock in Australia, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and my personal favorite, we zoomed in to the 50-yard line of Soldier Field, home to the NFL’s Chicago Bears. Ain’t technology awesome…