I think it would be a good thing for there to be a class in elementary or middle-school, one entire semester, devoted just to reviewing the ‘zeitgeist’ of everyday technology from just before the Industrial Revolution to present-day. So kids could learn at a very high-level what people did each day in order to communicate with each other; what media was used by society; what terms they might hear referred to by their parents and grandparents… for example:
origins of communication – smoke signals to telegraph to telecommunications
methods of data storage – stone tablets, khuipu, papyrus/paper, punched-card/tape, magnetic tape, hard discs, solid-state/flash …
origins of photography, film, videotape and the various formats used to-date
Media distribution: courier, newspapers, books, microfiche, radio, TV, early internet (RealPlayer, Flash), …
origins of computing, tabulating, touch on WWII and the origin of digital computing, then origins of the Internet
Just showing a video clip of how some of the older technologies worked would help youth understand what was going on and the meaning of many terms.
The details wouldn’t need to get very deep, but it would really help to just see how things have changed, and where key terms in our language came from, and a sense of how the speed of knowledge and communications have changed over the ages and even within their parents’ lifetimes. Something to give them a perspective on just how different their life so far has been from the generations before.
I’m basically reiterating a lot (but not all) of what was in the History of Computation class in University, but this would be a much, much simpler curriculum aimed at middle-schoolers.
I think it would be a good thing for there to be a class in elementary or middle-school, one entire semester, devoted just to reviewing the ‘zeitgeist’ of everyday technology from just before the Industrial Revolution to present-day. So kids could learn at a very high-level what people did each day in order to communicate with each other; what media was used by society; what terms they might hear referred to by their parents and grandparents… for example:
Just showing a video clip of how some of the older technologies worked would help youth understand what was going on and the meaning of many terms.
The details wouldn’t need to get very deep, but it would really help to just see how things have changed, and where key terms in our language came from, and a sense of how the speed of knowledge and communications have changed over the ages and even within their parents’ lifetimes. Something to give them a perspective on just how different their life so far has been from the generations before.
I’m basically reiterating a lot (but not all) of what was in the History of Computation class in University, but this would be a much, much simpler curriculum aimed at middle-schoolers.