My two-year-old granddaughter has lots of play time, so it is interesting to see what she does with her time. She loves the outdoors, so some of her time is spent in exploring the outdoors. She has all kinds of toys, but doesn't spend a lot of time with the toys. She has role playing objects like tables, kitchens, small tables and chairs, tea sets, houses with families, and access to part of a study. This she loves. She will have make-believe tea parties, invite me to eat plastic foods after she "cooks" in the kitchen, ask me to play house with her family in the giant house, and play on my computer in the study.
Some of her time is spent with stories and games. Now, by stories and games I don't mean books and table games. Leap Frog has books with mostly pictures, but a small amount of text. The book has an accompanying bear "reader." When the reader is place on any part of the text, an eye in the reader sees the text and, through a small speaker, reads it aloud to my granddaughter. But, also on the page with the text are pictures of animals, character, and other objects. Placing the reader on the objects also allows the reader to give extra information to the text. She spends a full 10% of her time with these books.
She spends another 10% of her time with a computer built for a two-year-old. It has a screen the size of an e-tablet. It takes pictures and has a scaled down version of photoshop. It has games. It allows her to accumulate reward points. It tells short and simple stories with animated characters. It teaches music appreciation and music reading. It has an art feature, so she can learn to "paint." It has a few more features, but she doesn't spend much time on those.
Only very occasionally does she read a book or ask to have one of the adults in her life read to her. Even when forced to listen to a book once in a while, she fidgets to go elsewhere before the reading is over. I certainly don't begrudge her. Reading and writing are really, really becoming relics of a day gone by.
2017 is the end of the ten-year war between the role of reading and writing and the forms of technology that will liberate people from the tedious, slow process required to read and write. A clear winner for part of the replacement of the two stalwarts of the past is in place.
Other methods and formats will quickly follow. I can choose to read or write because I was born in the old world before 2007. But, those born after that will not need reading and writing to function in society, nor to present for projects to get degrees in college. And eventually not even to obtain advanced degrees. Fortunately, a few schools like the Harmony Schools of Science around the state and the University of Texas system's STEM schools understand this shift. Their students demonstrate their understanding of subject matter with projects using Ipads mainly, but with manipulatives and other graphic demonstrations as well. Kudos, kudos, kudos to those who lead the way into the new era the world is experiencing!
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