One day, I was sitting in my room doing some work when I heard the phone ringing in the next room. I didn’t bother because it wasn’t mine. The phone rang out once, then started again. It was at that time when my grandmother called me and asked to show her how to receive a call.
It was while showing my grandma how to receive, was that I realised something. She had become entirely dependent on other people to show her around the modern world. The world for my grandmother had changed beyond recognition and it was impossible for her to understand the modern world now. I also realised that this is what would happen to us if we fail to be in sync with the world.
Let’s face it. Technology is going to be everywhere in the future. Everything we do, if not already, soon will depend on technology. So not knowing anything about technology in the modern world is like not knowing how to hunt in the hunting and gathering days. It is imperative that technology should be a big part of school education, otherwise we would be obsolete even before we start our working lives.
Each time a new piece of technology comes into our lives, it does not take much time for us to become dependent on it. Nowadays, almost nobody books a cab by hailing it, most people don’t bargain with the shopkeeper, people don’t maintain their businesses by writing records in a paper. They do these things digitally. These physical actions from a few years ago have been transformed into a dance of ones and zeros.
If we don’t understand technology, we simply would not be able to comprehend the future world, since we are going to be surrounded by technology. More importantly, technology is replacing a lot of jobs in the market and changing the requirements of the remaining ones. Nowadays almost all jobs would require one to use a computer.
The future world is going to be ruled by technology companies. How are we going to be a part of these companies if we learn to write our first line of code at the age of 30? I have heard that schools in the UK teach their students to code from a very early age. I wish Indian schools also adopted this system. Schools should teach us the basics of using the internet, MS office and write simple lines of code. This would give us a chance to have an important role to play in the future.
In my school, we have been lucky, as technology is a big focus here. Some of my friends and I have even been given the responsibility to maintain the school’s entire technological infrastructure. We have two computer labs with about a hundred computers, more than sixty tablets and an uninterrupted internet connection. We need these because a big part of our school education is done using technology. We have an in-house developed English reading software. We have a graded math software which helps us to solve many thinking oriented problems arranged according to levels of difficulty.
We have helped in developing android Math and English apps for students of lower classes which can give them unlimited math practice and teach basic reading. In addition, if there is a problem with our school’s technology infrastructure, we have to quickly find a solution to fix it. These varieties of activities involving technology give us a good foundation to be ready for the future.
I hope when I become old, I can be the one who could show young family members the way around technological gadgets, and not the other way round.