What Gratitude May Come

On Fridays we have “fun” in my eighth grade keyboarding class which right now means that I'm introducing them to the future of technology and giving some thought provoking predictions along with videos for the next few years. We were talking about Google glasses and augmented reality.

I had forgotten that the seniors were over to the side working on their term papers, when one spoke up and said,

“Mrs. Vicki, I made a film two years a go about Google glasses, I predicted them.”

And rightly so, he did.

This video was created for the NetGenEd project two years a go.

He worked very hard to predict what augmented reality would look like and I'm shocked to see how close I think he came.

This fits with an email that I received just last night from a student I taught five years a go.

As a Telecommunications major at ******* many of my courses overlap the many lessons I once had in your class. In my Media and Technology class we examine emerging trends and future developments in the technological side of communications.I laugh to think of these as emerging trends when they include such things as the power of blogs, wikis, and other features of Web 2.0 that you taught to me nearly 5 years ago. So firstly, thank you for truly functioning on the cutting edge… Please stay ahead of the curve. 

Additionally, in my Media Production class, my professor asked who was adept at using Excel. I was shocked when only myself and another raised our hands. He looked at us, unimpressed, and said you two will get internships. It's funny to see how many people have never used excel and how important it is, when, to a student at Westwood, these skills were standard and even trivialized in the back of my mind by how often and thoroughly we used them.  

I just wanted to thank you. It's hard for a high school kid to appreciate the gravity of what you teach…. 

I hope your students take this to heart much more than I did at their age because if they do, they too will be lightyears ahead of the curve.

What this student didn't know is that just yesterday after school I was asking myself hard questions. Things like:

• Am I pushing kids too hard? 
• Is it worth all the headache and struggle to sometimes do this sort of thing?
• Does it really matter at all?

This was written during the school year in May but I was so busy, I didn't have time to proof it. Sharing it for you now.