Epiphany!

Yesterday I was sitting in my van waiting for my pain medication to kick in and I had an epiphany (I hope). I was watching the parking security kid go around to all the different cars and beep their little tags with his little piece of technology. It now scans the bar codes on the tags AND prints a little receipt looking thing that is actually a ticket. When I was an undergrad, I remember a regular security guy had to walk around and write out the tickets. He would stick it under your windshield wiper and you would curse as you approached your car and see it sitting there. The ticket was actually an envelope and the one end was the adhesive part. If it rained and they put the ticket under your wiper wrong, it would stick to the windshield. This was just 5 years ago.

Then I started thinking about police officers and how they now have actual printers in their cars and print tickets on an actual 8.5x11" piece of paper. When I was 16 and got my first speeding ticket, the officer had to fill out a form (with pen) and give you that as your ticket.

I guess I'm wondering what happens when the nice police officers' printer jams. Do they call someone to fix it if they can't? Or do they all have to take a class on printer maintenance to make sure they can fix it no matter what happens? These are things we don't think of that we should. In an office, if a printer jams a there is either someone more experienced there who can fix it or they call in a professional.

If other professions are using technology, whether new or old, then we need to prepare our students. We DO need to change education at least a little bit to start so that we can prepare our students for the technology that is out there. We, as educators, are charged with the duty of readying our students for the real world. And that means we must prepare them for the technology of that world and arm them with critical thinking skills so that they will be able to figure out, on their own, how to solve problems. That is the most important skill in any job, maybe even in life.

http://www.computereq.com/vdirs/images/index/misc_test.jpg