The Times They Are A-Changin'

My wife and I attended our daughter's 5th grade Open House tonight. We also have a 13-year old son, so we've been to our fair share of these events. What was interesting today was the # of questions that parents asked about the Internet.

"Using the Internet for research seems so ... easy. Is that okay?"

"How can we keep our kids from seeing dirty pictures while working on school assignments?"

"How do we convince our child that just because they found something on the Internet, doesn’t mean it's accurate?"

"How can I convince my child that it's good to visit a library to do research, not just fire up a web browser? - Or am I wrong about this??"

Amazing. No one ever raised these issues back when our boy was a 5th grader! Talk about the Internet took up almost 15 minutes' worth of a 30-minute session.

I couldn't help but think that the Internet is changing everything. What a cool time to be alive, at the dawn of a new age. I am not sure that they'll be better students, but for sure, our kids will be different students than we were, as they learn to deal with this vast resource.