These days, technology drives production in business and, in turn, the way schools educate our children seems to be evolving.
One of the items on the third-grade school supply list is a flash drive, a little device that stores electronic data. The list calls for as many sanitizing items -- Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer -- as it does paper. The only paper products on the list are one pack of loose leaf and some journals; no spiral-bound notebooks.
Another great example, Blytheville High School is all-in with New Tech, a new approach that centers on project-based learning and puts a computer in each students' hands.
It's pretty amazing how things have changed in such a short period of time. For most of my school years, notebooks and folders were sufficient. Teachers taught out of school-issued textbooks, wrote on chalkboards and keyed in grades in a grade book. A calculator was our most high-tech device. Now elementary students are working with iPads and computers. They are doing more research online than in libraries. I wonder how many know what the Dewey Decimal System is?
Traditional school supplies and educating techniques are becoming obsolete, it seems. Reading, writing and arithmetic will probably one day all be done on machine. Schools no longer teach cursive writing, which sort of makes sense. Many don't handwrite letters, memos, etc. -- they type them.
Technology is here to stay; everyone might as well embrace it. It's gotten to the point, though, that gadgets have eliminated the need for some jobs and turned small crews into one person who pushes a button.
When I first started in this business, the newspaper editors dummied a layout and someone cut and paste the individual stories, headlines and ads according to those layout sheets. That process would take a good portion of the morning and didn't always conclude with perfectly straight lines and columns. Then another person shot the page and made the plate.
Now we do the entire layout electronically; some pages take only a few minutes to paginate.
We electronically send the PDFs to the imagesetter, which sends it to the plate-maker.
The two aforementioned positions are obsolete -- and have been for several years now. Technology makes the job market more competitive in any economy.
It is vital that kids have that background when they walk across the stage and accept their high school degree.
Of course, young people are becoming more and more proficient with gadgets at a younger age. It seems by the time they are 3, they can operate a smart phone better than some adults.
In fact, I know some in their 60s who still can't use a smart phone and prefer to stick with the simplest of cell phones. They might have a difficult time in today's learning environment that is becoming more and more reliant on technology.
It will be interesting to see how the inundation of technology impacts test scores and students' success in the future.
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com