Skype...it's a whole new world

Here I was, thinking that I was pretty tech savvy. I mean I had dial up internet when I was in middle school and I was IMing with the best of them in high school. I got my first cell phone when I got my drivers license and it had no texting or camera functions. I felt the frustration with my parents for not having a clue about creating email addresses or facebook. The past few months of educational technology revelations have left me feeling old and I suppose much the way my parents felt when they had to ask "what is myspace"? When skyping...yes skyping the other night with high school seniors enrolled in an online girls school, I was left amazed with not only their literary abilities, but their ease and comfort with technology.There they were on the screen conversing with a room full of teachers or soon to be teachers as if they did it everyday. I found myself shoving myself out of my comfort zone just to ask them a question. Even though I question students every day, I found this hard. To think that students in high school are feeling that this technology is second nature is amazing to me. They skype and blog and have twitter accounts and google-docs and wikispaces and use them well. I have these things now and still don't use them well. These students were connecting with people worldwide on political issues! When I was a senior in high school I think I was pretty proud of myself when I figured out PowerPoint! I was also impressed with their answer to a question about elementary students and technology. They did not respond the way I thought they would, instead they pointed out that many of these technologies might be too advanced for kids in the k-5 level and should focus of different types of learning strategies. My fear has always been how much is too much? I often wonder how many more advances we can make before we are "plugged in" completely and it was nice to hear teenagers speaking to balance. While I am not yet comfortable with skype and while I could probably enjoy it with friends, it will take some getting used to if I want to connect with people I am not familiar with.