Is great technology making it harder for our kids to learn to CREATEtechnology?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but is it possible that the more our kids use current technology, the more they lose their ability to create the technology of the future?

Today, I'm pondering the file path.  What does the following line mean to you?

C:\Sites\edboost3_site\images\focus.jpg

For anyone who builds websites or writes computer code or even just digs around in computers beyond the opening screens, that path is a map -- it tells you exactly how to find a file (in this case the image file "focus") on my hard drive.

Would that path mean anything to your kids?  It would read like a foreign language to most of our students.

When my students finish working on a document, they typically just click the "disk" button to save.  They don't even think about where they're saving it. Our computers default to saving that file to "My Documents." When my students want to work on that file again, they go to "Recent Documents" and click it.  But our computers are in a computer lab, and if that particular computer has gotten heavy use from other students and a student's document doesn't appear in "Recent Documents," we get a freak out, "Someone erased my homework!"

Many of us who grew up in, as my students like to call it, "the 19s," played with BASIC or LOGO as kids. We may have even used a computer without clickable menus!  Even if we never played with programming, we at least remember having to navigate "Save As..." to save our documents to a specific file on the hard drive or -- gasp -- a floppy disk!

Today's kids just click buttons. They barely even use menus. Some have even given up computers entirely for tablets.  The beauty and ease of these amazing machines mean that the kids barely ever have to think about what they're doing.  They simply click and magic happens.

And then, when they try to do something more complex, they're stuck.  They can use a program to create a beautiful website (we use both commercial programs like Dreamweaver and free programs like NVu, which allow them to type and format and insert photos), but when they upload the page, they can't figure out why their images turn into those ugly red Xs.  My students don't understand that when they "insert" an image they don't actually insert the IMAGE into the page, but rather a path to an image -- and when they move the page from their computer to an online server, they have to change those paths.  I find that when I try to explain, they don't even know what a path is! (Yes, sites like Blogger eliminate this problem by having you upload images directly to the server -- but you can't do much web design at all before you run into the problem of broken images and links caused by incorrect paths.)

At EdBoost, our students know theoretically that they need math and logic to get into computer programming (and yes, half of our students want to write video games for a living!), but they don't realize that they'll need basic computer literacy just to get started.

How can we get our kids to start to understand how computers and websites and programs actually work?

For one, I'm going to make my daughter use an actual computer when she gets a little older (as opposed to just the Kindle that she loves but which obscures all of the paths and directories that must exist inside that little Kindle brain).  I will let her use a computer and give her her own folder and make her save her documents there.  I want to make her click around and be deliberate about where she puts things.  Computer programming is all about precision (As I tell my students all the time, "It's a computer. It only does what you actually tell it to do, not what you meant to tell it to do").  And, I will make a conscious effort to point out things like paths in MS Explorer and in URLs. I want her to ask, "What do those slashes mean?" and I want to be able to tell her the answer.

Next, I really want to show my daughter the code behind the web pages she's viewing.  If you open any website in Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, you can see the code behind the page.  Just go to the menu (three little lines on the far right of the menu bar on Chrome; the Orange Firefox bar on the left on Firefox), click Tools (in Chrome) or Web Developer (Firefox), then click View Source (Chrome) or Page Source (Firefox) and there it is, the html for the page you're looking at.  Scroll down a bit and you'll see the text on the page.  You'll also see the paths for the images and links.  Once you know what you're looking at, you can parse it out.  It's pretty cool!  And, even after a very basic web design class, a kid could really dissect a page of code like this.  I'm hoping to get to do this with my daughter (I need to start studying if I hope to answer all the questions I bet she'll have!).

If I get really ambitious, I want us to play some open source video games and then download the source code to take a look.  These are huge files, but they do give some insight into just how much goes into writing a video game. I hope by then my programming skills will have improved enough so that I can actually teacher her what's going on!  But even if you can't make heads or tails of the code, just seeing the black and white type that make up really complex games is incredible.

Step three, if my daughter is even mildly interested in computers of video games, I will absolutely find her a computer class -- the younger she is, the better. Programming languages are just that: languages.  They have vocabularies and syntaxes and I can only imagine that they are best learned when the learner is young.  All kids -- but especially kids who are interested in creating for computers -- should understand how they work.  I'd love for my daughter to become a programming expert -- but I'm going to take responsibility for at least giving her some basic programming skills that she can build on.

Our technological lives are getting so easy, it doesn't seem impossible that a huge proportion of the next generation might lose the basic abilities they need to push technology to the next level.  I'm hoping I can help my kid be one of the technologically savvy ones!

Any other thoughts on how to get it done?

UPDATE: Many thanks to Ed Stabler, EdBoost's volunteer computer guru (and sometimes computer teacher), for the link to this blog, which makes my point, perhaps better than I do:
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/

Can we raise kids to be more efficient?

We talk about efficiency a lot in our learning center.

Our homework help program is filled with students, from third to 11th grade, who generally spend two to three hours a day doing about 45 minutes worth of homework.  That's not to say that they don't occasionally get slammed with tons of work, but most of the time, they just take forever to finish.

Why?

Unlike parents trying to get their kids to do work at home, we have no TVs and don't allow social media on the computers.  There's no g-chat or Tumblr calling their names.

How, in that environment, can kids be unfocused?

Let's see... Everytime someone walks past the room they're working in, they look up.  Every noise from outside sends them racing to the window (so much so that, when we hear the screech of brakes, we wait a beat and then automatically call out, "Sit back down!").  Every time a tutor explains something to another student (even it's a rerun of a lesson that same student could not bear to listen to when it was her homework last year) it's head-turning and riveting.

But, perhaps more than anything else, every time our students phones buzz, they have to look ("What if it's my mom?").  No matter what.  They have to look.

Let me pick on Jonny for a classic example.  He's a 9th grader and his geometry homework is hard. Not every tutor can help and sometimes he has to wait until a math expert is free. I can see him, stuck and annoyed, trying to wait patiently until I get get to him. I finally do. I read the question. I ask him what he knows and he shows me his work.  "There -- that's where I'm stuck," he'll tell me, pointing to his scratch paper. I lean over, make two, maybe three pencil strokes on the paper, and his pocket vibrates. He grabs it, "Sorry" he mumbles, getting up and stepping out of the room.

He's utterly polite.  He knows the rules.  He steps out so that he doesn't distract others.  But there's no question that he will stop what he's doing to look at it and find some reason to answer that phone (they're only supposed to talk to parents and rides, but then there are friends who need homework assignments and various other ways they get around our rules).

And yes, it's probably his mom. And it's probably something "critical," like her telling him that she'll be there in 30 minutes.

He slides back into his seat, "Sorry." But he knows as well as I do that I couldn't (well, I wouldn't) wait for him and I've started helping someone else. He'll have to wait again.

This scenario plays out daily -- with each and every child who has a phone.

And it's not just their phones.  I rarely carry my cell phone when I'm working with students.  But occasionally I have it on me because I was showing someone a photo or a video and it was faster than setting up a computer. Or, on a rare day, I'm on call for someone or waiting for a call. On those days, if my phone rings or buzzes, EVERY kid in the room will tell me, "Your phone's ringing."

I know it is.  And when I tell them, I'll look at it when I'm done doing what I'm doing, they look at me with their mouths open. Why in the world am I not answering it RIGHT NOW?

They also go crazy that we don't always answer the office phone.  In fact, we almost never do.  I figure, if we're working with students, that's the first priority.  Anyone else can get a call back.

But, for the kids, the response is Pavlovian.  They are entirely and completely at the beck-and-call of their phones (and, I imagine, when at home, to whatever chat or messaging program causes missives to pop up on their screens).

It's not like the problem is unique to teens and preteens.  Everyone one of us who works at a computer knows how we can fritter a day away with silly messages. Most of us have our own strategies for blocking off some periods of time without distractions.  We all have those moments when we're irritated to have our concentration broken, frustrated to have a work-roll broken by a phone call or email.

My biggest worry is that our kids don't have those feelings of frustration. For them, the phone comes first.  I try to explain to them: People call you when they have nothing to do!  They have time, but it doesn't mean that you do!  A scroll through their text messages attests to this truth:

"What r u doing?"
"Homework," types our student before we confiscate the phone.
"Me too.  Doesn't it suck?"

And if the phone were not taken by one of our eagle-eyed tutors, the inane conversation would go on.  Neither student doing work or having any meaningful conversation-- just wasting time.

And they KNOW that most of the texts they get are nothing -- just chatter.  And still, they have to look every time it buzzes.

As the mother of a toddler, I have to ask why.

I think that there are two reasons:

• First, their parents get angry when they don't respond immediately. So, the "good kids" have been trained to check all calls and texts immediately.
• Perhaps more importantly, our students live in a world where everyone is at the beck-and-call of their phones.

Number one is a problem.  I've had tutors go down to our parking lot to ask parents to please stop calling their kids during tutoring (a tutoring hour that the parents are paying for!).  It seems critical for parents to try not to "bother" their kids more than they have to during work time.  It also seems important for parents to understand that although students are often messing around, sometimes they are focused, and, if that's even a possibility, parents should give them time to respond.

But I think number two is the more pervasive problem.  As adults, we have all become enslaved to our phones. In meetings with parents, even consultations that parents are paying for by the hour, they often have to stop to check their phones. We use our phones so casually -- calling and texting at any time of day and over any small issue.  We know how trivial many of our texts and calls are and yet, when we're on the receiving end, we feel utterly compelled to reply immediately.

And, while, as adults, we probably all remember fighting over NOT having to get up to answer the kitchen phone (it's probably not for me anyway!), kids live in a world where people's phones are always at hand and always for them.  

I know that my kid will grow up in a world where she will be expected to be reachable a lot of the time.  But, more than likely, she will be like me, someone who needs to be generally reachable, but not a cardiologist or a first responder, not someone on whom lives depend.

So, I want to train her to prioritize the people she's with and the work that she's doing, over the potential of the phone.

How can I do it?  Explaining and instructing does NOTHING.  I talk to our students until I'm blue in the face.  Still the buzz of a phone pulls them from any work, any lesson, any conversation.

For now, with my two year old (who will not have her own phone for a good long while), all I can do is be wiling to ignore my phone.  When we're playing and the phone buzzes, I work hard not to look at it until we're done.  I try to make sure that she knows she's more important than whatever is coming in (and, I admit, yesterday, it was sort of killing me when my phone was beeping out of sight!).  

I also try to let the phone go to voicemail, and I tell her why.

We were at the beach yesterday and my phone rang.  When she heard it, her little head popped up immediately, "Is it Grandma?"  I was lucky.  I could tell from the caller ID that it was the drugstore, "No, Bug, it's not grandma. It's the drug store. I'll listen to the message later."  But, even when it's someone I do want to talk to, if it's not a good time, I try my best to let the phone got to voicemail and give a call back later.

I don't know if I can make my child an efficient worker, but I will try my best not to train her to give up her own enjoyment and focus in the service of a cell phone.  

Of course, by the time she's old enough for a cell phone, who knows what kind of technology I'll be up against!

Learning what? From whom?

Some of our crazy students.

I imagine that most educators have the same thoughts: Is raising my own kid going to be like managing dozens of other people's kids?  Is my kid going to turn out like that? How can I get my kid to behave like that?  And, of course, that child we want our kid to emulate one moment, and is the same one we would consider the worst possible role model the next moment.

When you teach (or run an after-school/tutoring/college counseling program like I do) you meet a lot of kids (and tweens and teens).  You adore a lot of them.  You can't stand a few of them.  And you get to see them from all kinds of angles.  And because you aren't related to them, you are burdened with none of that unconditional love, you see aspects of kids that their parents often don't, or can't, see.

So, what can you learn about parenting kids from kids who are currently being parented?

I think about it ALL the time.

My colleagues and I talk about it ALL the time.

That whiny little sibling in the hallway who won't let his mom get a word in edgewise? How do you make sure your child doesn't do that?  And, now that you have a two year who shouts, whenever you have an adult conversation, "Stop talking!  I want to talk!" does that mean that's the road you're headed down? Is your child destined to become that whiny child?

Then there's the kids you're in awe of.

I make dozens of types of cookies and brownies and blondies and candies for our end of the year Summer Celebration.  We throw in a bit of savory junk food for good measure.  Then last year, I decided to add orzo salad to the mix (I use this recipe, but swap out parsley for green onions, toasted almonds for pine nuts, and up the lemon juice -- it's delicious, but a decidedly adult kind of delicious) Given the choice of chili, pizza, nachos (replete with velveeta), and scores of cookies and treats, one 7th grader could not get enough of the orzo salad.  When he saw it again this year he said, "That's my favorite!" How exactly do you raise a child with a palate like that?

And, let's not forget the pre-teen or teenager who ALWAYS says hello when he arrives and good-bye when he leaves, who always smiles and asks how you're doing, who always says please and thank you. You have to love that kid.  He's so personable and polite.  Yet, how do you make your kid that kid?

So, for years, I'm been talking about "when I have a kid..." or "if my kid ever starts to..." And then I had a kid.  And now she's two and a half.  My little baby has turned into an actual kid (it's true -- she's short but she's definitely a kid) and it's time to see where all musings lead.

Can I learn how to be a better parent by watching my crazy students?