There is a tender balance of power between the experienced and the youthful.
While youth usually equals stronger and faster, with age comes wisdom, and if knowledge is power, the edge goes to the
aged. But what if the playing field is skewed? An Infiniti, although a good choice financially (and a pretty good ride),
will never share the prestige of a BMW or Mercedes, but what if the tires of an Infiniti needed to cross the Connector?
Beemers and Benzes would have two choices: strap on a set of Infiniti's shoes and risk a fall from grace, or plunge
headlong into Stone Mountain, dissolving into a fiery mass of leather and scrap metal. In other words, can a grown
adult today learn enough on the job to compete with techno-brats trained in school to think and breathe on computers? If
you have not thought about this, it's time to start, because a new generation of technology is here to stay, and key
industry people say embrace it or take the road of 8-tracks and Hula-Hoops.
Only those jobs where you have to program and hack away on a PC all day will be affected by the burgeoning
re-generation...right? Wrong. Every job from Marta driver to classics professor is experiencing the thrust of
technology. Much like the Industrial Revolution increased factory automation which produced factory jobs of the 20th
century, the information revolution of today has created ambiguity in the job market. One forecast says 80 percent of
jobs 20 years from now have not even been created. Guess who's going to occupy most of these. That's right, little
Nicky from Conyers Elementary and his friend Jill from Loganville Junior High.
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Who Are They?
Children are learning differently today. At the Atlanta New Century School, located downtown in the historic Healey
building, the days of a class being taught by a teacher with only a textbook are over. Technology is now a primary
resource for teachers in the classroom. For instance, a teacher may give a lesson on the Civil War and offer a computer
program along with a text
Atlanta New Century School brings the world to the classroom through technology. You can find the school on the
internet at www.newcenturyschools.com
book, guiding a child through Andersonville and the "Gettysburg Address". Cole Walker, a co-founder of New Century,
thinks the mere introduction of a child to software is not effective unless orchestrated by the teacher, who may or may
not find the program relevant to his or her curriculum.
Walker sees a more grandiose approach involving what he calls "Unified Media," or the
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conjunction of TV, the Internet, interactive software, textbooks, and video conferencing, to allow a lesson to "come
alive" for the student. For instance, Maya Quest was an activity that allowed children in various schools to follow
along with an archeological expedition through South America in search of Mayan artifacts. Through interaction on the
Internet, children saw the voyage unfold. They viewed thousands of pictures, enabling them to locate artifacts along
the path and meet actual Mayan descendents. Votes were taken along the journey of the children on controversial points
such as should the team give money to beggars? Set up their lap-tops in the middle of a poverty-sticken Indian tribe?
What ancient site to see next? Enormously popular among teachers and students, Maya Quest was a success and a good
forecast for learning in the future. "School can no longer be thought of as a place to memorize and regurgitate a
finite amount of information. It has to make use of every accessible channel of knowledge. Information can be accessed
in many different ways now; we have to use these sources and not limit the classroom to just the textbook and teacher,"
says Walker. The teacher must understand how to design the most effective curriculum to convey a lesson using all
avenues of knowledge. Our society is rapidly undergoing a transformation suited to the gathering and analyzing of
information, and the ones who do it best will go far.
By Micah Goodman
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