The 2 readers of this blog that I know I have (my Dad and my Uncle) can verify that we are expecting 3-5 inches of snow overnight in our area. This evening when I was helping to put my kids in bed, I quizzed the darling little rugrats on what was suppose to happen tonight. Upon asking the question, my 5-year-old daughter, Chloe, screamed, "IT'S GONNA SNOW!!" with excitement. She then proceeded to say, "We logged on to the computer today at school and the weatherbug told us about the snow." Is anybody else moved by the significance of this statement like I am? The weatherbug isn't the only thing my daughter knows how to use on a computer and I'm sure we all have stories about how our kids are wizards on the Internet but I'm after something deeper here.

My career, and it's probably safe to say at this point that many careers, in computers have started out during a time when most people were afraid of computers. Computer people, therefore were able to reap the benefits of user ignorance by demonstrating power over the seemingly intimidating machines. Because people that could tame the electronic beasts with ease were so hard to find, computer gurus were courted and paid accordingly. Now that more people are getting into this computer thing, more software is easier to use and more users are learning how easy the computer thing actually is, we're seeing a paradigm shift in the industry. Most would blame this on the economy, which is part of it, but I think the story about my daughter is an example of something that we are going to be noticing as her generation gets older and into the workforce.

Regardless of whether or not my daughter wants to be a computer person, its obvious that she's going to have to know how to utilize computers and the Internet as an important tool in her life. It's becoming a necessity and hopefully parents and teachers alike will notice the trend. My daughter's school is going that direction, but it still isn't an important part of the curriculum. When my daughter had her first progress report, they gave us a curriculum guide for every semester from grades K thru 8. Nowhere did I see anything about computers. I posted a question to a district representative about why computer skills were not reported, and her answer was, "we are exploring those avenues, but you won't see anything in the curriculum for a while." I'm not too worried about my kids because I go a little overboard on the computer thing as you may be able to tell. The thing that scares me is how little schools and parents are concentrating on teaching their children how to use computers even though its starting to become too obvious to ignore. Maybe they're still afraid.