still mad at the little punk.

Lets start with a story for this weeks post:

My grandparents basement is one of those old basements that feels so cozy and comfortable that you almost can't leave before eating milk and cookies. The light psudo-shag carpet, the old broken in couches (in which have hosted more grandchildren naps per square foot than any bed, in any house), and the old wood-paneled walls that seem to be held together by the old family photos from all twenty-one of my mother's cousins.
Here I sit, on the three-cushioned couch against the wall adjacent to the TV with my nine year old little cousin getting my tail kicked in some new Xbox360 game that he brought over. As my frustration grows because I am literally getting murdered over and over by a nine year old, I begin trying to formulate a plan to put the little cocky pretween in his place.
Finally it hits me. My old fat, original PlayStation 2 is in the closet from when I was his age. I hoped it still worked as I challenged him to a match in TimeSplitters. A game I was master of years before. To my enjoyment I proceed to win the first round. Just as I started to get excited my screen turns red. The little punk got me. Then he got me again. and again.
I'm not going to continue with the details of my embarrassment of getting beating at my own game not only once- but ten times in a row. When I was nine, it took me hours of frustration to achieve what he did in minutes. 

 I'm getting frustrated talking about it, so here my friends, is where the story ends and the point begins.

Times are a-changin. Children are so insanely intuitive to technology that it is almost becoming instinct on how to work them. How to manipulate machines to work exactly the way they want them too, and problem solve faster than we ever thought possible. In fact, many children have cell phones ten years before any of us did. Not only cell phones- but iPhones and Galaxies, and devices that are inconceivably more powerful computers than my family desktop when I was that age.
Harnessing this technology is essential to teaching children. As educators we need to understand this technology and make ourselves keep up on what is going on in their world. If we don't we will be deemed obsolete by our students. Because it will be instinctive to them, we must force ourselves to learn as fast as they do and become so familiar with the technology that we can show them a thing or two without them laughing and dancing circles around us. We are facing a challenge that has been faced by educators since technology itself was born, but never has the gap between teachers and students grown at such an alarming rate, and unfortunately for us- if we don't close that gap- we will be obsolete.

Technology is power.