I want to state my position on the state of our schools and technology. having been from the era when computers were first introduced in this district, we have not come very far in integrating these tools into the education process. They still remain in the periphery mainly, with a few exceptions of classes that allow more freedom to create new media on these machines. I think that largely the younger generation is learning computers mainly in their own time from their parents or on their own connected to the rest of the internet world.
The administration is a silo in itself, completely missing the opportunity that the internet protocol and networked applications has to offer. We are choosing to be conservative in how we expose our children to the world of computers in the age of the internet, and for mostly god reason. Unfortunately, caution turns into a disjointed education. Currently our lives are becoming more and more digitized, which means the generation in primary school now, will undoubtedly be living completely within the context of the internet of computers. The question that is most pressing is will this generation be in control of this environment, or simply end-users, consumers, and administrative tools of huge monolithic privately owned media systems. Yes, it is hard to imagine any ubiquity in programing the internet; the de-specialization of "web development" and "web design", creating a new standard of administrative competence like handwriting, paper filing, telephone operation, spreadsheets, data entry, etc. are to today's administrative process. We cannot, because of our own unfamiliarity with the likes of internet standards such as HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, and UNIX(not an exhaustive list) underestimate the coming generation's ability, or neccesity to understand and control the internet. In fact, our children are already being exposed to this and are learning on their own, and with our help, we can excelarate their command of this new frontier and usher in a new horizon for education. (this argument is more attached to the future outlook of expanding the system model of integration with the rest of the school and admin.)