Technolandy

Day 79 (of 2025/26) Things change aka shift happens…

These were once survival skills in a low-tech world. Today they’re nostalgia skills – useful, but no longer central. We still teach these skills, but mainly because they’re familiar to us… and we need to recognize that relevance has shifted and that schools cannot be artificial environments that don’t reflect the lived world… we have to get comfortable not preserving yesterdays competencies, but to help young people master todays realities (including how to use personal screens as the greatest accelerator for personalized learner to ever disrupt the traditional school environment AND things like social media…) … and tomorrows unknowns…

Counting money… while learning about change et al in elementary school – kids will not necessarily remember how it all works when they start a part time job because of the lack of practice in between the introduction of the concept and the expectation that they still will recall a skill that has decreasingly real life applications – when most of the interactions they see with money are based on cards… why would counting coins and getting fingers dirty be relevant? I mean, knowing how to make change so that when people add a coins to get a quarter back or mis-enter how much is being paid (when cash is involved) helps keep things less stressful, but I see this happening less frequently…

Reading analog clocks… again, the skill is taught, but the majority of time devices are digital devices… so if we want kids to retain the skill, we need to reteach, not roll our eyes. Analog clocks are predominantly in schools and on some wrists, but digital, and it’s better precision, has made the analog clock more like the sundial – a quaint way to know what time it is. Almost a flex when wearing a watch with hands on it – especially a digital watch (drives my youngest nuts that I do that)

Phone numbers… with digits being stored in devices, the memorization of friends numbers has definitely faded with personal screens knowing our contacts… thankfully the concept of ‘long distance’ calls has likewise faded… kids today still memorize passwords and usernames… the change is about what is worth memorizing…

Cursive script – I know there are many who like to share the studies that correlate student learning success with writing things down over typing them… but printing is as good as writing, and in many cases easier… while texting has taken over the supposed benefits of handwriting: speed + legibility (not mine) + permanence. Focusing on printing and typing for most (those with pretty script

Mental Math – it does (and should)exist… with context (much like other things like historical dates, formulas, capitals, etc) but the world is valuing things differently in an era of instant access… retrieval matters less than reasoning, synthesis and knowing what to do with the information – the skill has shifted from storage to sense-making… we still need number sense and historical thinking, but not everyone needs to have the same speed at that retrieval (cuz we never did have universal mastery anyways) number sense still 10/10 in terms of importance – but loving some vents I’m hearing about trying to end long division as a ‘mandatory skill’. I love mental math activities and skills (daily play Oodle), but I also read those paper tablets for information and entertainment – and a stat I saw recently indicated that 40% of respondents had read 0 books last year…

Balancing chequebooks (checkbooks for any American readers) – finances and taxes are always complex in schools as the spectrum is quite wide – from whey to use/avoid payday loan outfits and how to hide money from the government at taxtime the way the top 1% does… but cheques are fading fast with information instantly updated in banks and no longer a need to keep track of money spent, but not deducted from your account until (much) later.

It’s not that kids can’t or shouldn’t do these things any more (as a librarian I love the joy of reading and the quaintness of paperbacks and physical books), but we have to acknowledge our own bias that too often we can’t imagine competence that doesn’t look like ours… Counting change, reading analog clocks, memorizing phone numbers — these were once markers of readiness. Today’s markers are harder to see, harder to measure, and often happening on screens we don’t inhabit. That doesn’t make them lesser. It makes them unfamiliar. And yet without analog clocks or pocket change, students are navigating a far more complex system than we ever had to… nostalgia is a poor proxy for relevance…