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Old 08-17-2019, 01:32 PM   #1
CG
BlahBlahBlah
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Wa.
Posts: 19,785
Opportunities then and now ...

Yesterday was my dads 82nd birthday. Usually I just give him a shout and we talk on the phone for a bit. Small talk stuff.

I called my granddaughter (14, freshman this year) and asked if she would like to go up to great granddads with me and take him out to dinner for his birthday ... Sure!

So we drove up and went out to dinner with my dad. We were talking about her starting HS and of course it went back to ... When I was in school, we didn't have this or that, snow, uphill both ways, library, blah blah blah. Im sure she loved that haha! And we talked about the opportunities out there for school kids (or anyone for that matter) that you could access via computer or heck even your smart phone.

Everything and anything A to Z, any subject, unlimited, and darn near all of it for free. Want a HS diploma? Online and free. College degree, online, maybe not free, but accessible to anyone. It really is mind blowing.

My wife and I were talking about it this morning. What if ( I love what if's ) we were starting freshman year, 1973 and the first day of class our teachers said, Today everything changes, and poof the internet was there exactly like it is today ... Would we jump on the chance to use it to learn and get degrees and skills to help us conquer our world going forward? Or would we get sucked into the social media abyss of today?

As an adult today I think, what's wrong with kids? They have everything at their fingertips to get a huge jumpstart on their adult lives and they are just goofing around with Selfies and likes ... Easy to say as an adult, but I wonder what we would have done with the above 1973 scenario.
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