Ahh… a sigh of relief as I sit down to my glass of wine – an earned treat after babysitting my niece this Valentine’s evening.  But as I sip on this glass of wine I cannot help but marvel at some of my nieces four-year old commentary on the evening, television shows and life in general.  Like most of you who are around children that age, you walk away often times in awe of their innocent wit and banter.  But more now than ever,  I am also  awed by the new found digital aptitude in children, five years and younger.   An example in youngster digital aptitude can be seen in today’s episode of four year old niece banter, which went like this ” Auntie Bev. Can I play with your iPad?  I want to colour and play the matching game and then we can play Netfilx.”  When I said that I did not know how to turn on the iPad and get to the games she wanted (yes, that includes Netflix – and please don’t be confused – it is the Netflix you know that streams movies – my niece just equates it to a game because she ‘games’ on my iPad), she turned to me, grabbed the iPad, and while sitting down in a ‘there there’ kind of manner said ” Don’t worry auntie Bev.  I will show you” – and she did.  She was even able to select her genre in Netflix, as she remembered our last time together, hankering around with the iPad.

Now with my niece being the first of her generation in our family, you can imagine that she is extremely spoiled and has every doll known to mankind, but what is interesting is that she has no interest in dolls, but is more attracted to all things digital  - computers, iPad’s, smart phones and the like.  She’s got more than just the basic child like fascination centred on the pretty back light – she is actually working, browsing, learning and maneuvering the tool, even better than one of her parents can (not saying which one).  It is no wonder that in conversation with a New York City elementary school teacher last week, she mentioned that she and her colleagues were in the middle of  going through training on how to use the iPad in the classroom, to further their lesson plans.

This truly digital age of children, we are bringing up, makes me think that the paper and mill factories could have reason for concern.

Random yet relevant thoughts:

• I mean could you imagine if it became a standard for every child to have an iPad or a similar like tablet.
• All lessons would be facilitated on the tablet
• Books would be provided in e-reader format – hopefully giving students a break on price points
• Home sick – no worries, let’s stream the lesson via an app. created for the remote teacher to student relationship.  One app., accessible by all, but schools have their own channel, shared by the teachers on staff

Now I get what the naysayers are shouting, the traditional art forms of handwriting and arts and crafts can’t be outdone by the digital world and I agree, but no reason why we can’t treat those as we do gym class.  And yes – I did just refer to ‘handwriting’ as if it was a thing of the past.