Catching up to Kindergarten

Technology Review posted an article today that talks about how young student are getting online. These kids are as young as three years old! If this is not a wake up call to many of those teacher training institutions who are still talking a slow road to technology integration into their curriculum, this is a wake up call. Forget the Millenials, these tiny tikes will be so wired that in 5-6 years when they are in the school system meeting the new teachers who are entering training this year and finding a job 5 years down the teachers won't even know what to do with them. Granted, there is no mention of what type of schools this article looked at and what the SEC of the region was. But it is still another signal that a strong effort needs to be made to make sure that pre-service teachers leave their training with sound IT related pedagogical skills. On a side note, I really liked how the article described the kids working in groups and sending email to their grand parents. All the while without being afraid of losing data (but what data do they have to lose). The social elements make them more comfortable using the computer as a tool:
"It helps them become more relaxed, more adventurous, and more willing to take risks as they learn," she said. "With adults, we're still afraid that we're going to blow up the computer. You never know if you're going to push the wrong button and lose all your data."
I think this helps support my arguments for Comfortable Computing.