Quite a while back, I remember sitting on the plush, green lawn of my grandparent's house, watching my grandfather pull his trick of whistling loudly into his "magic" thumbs. Beyond the fact that he had a piece of grass he was using to create a high-pitched "squeal", not much more was clear to me. Eventually though, after playing around with my own piece of grass, I too, figured out this amazingly new way to entrance (and annoy!) those around me.
Well, today, the kids were drawing on an iPad App I discovered at a recent conference I attended. Knowing they were not aware of it's full capabilities, I asked to see the iPad and began drawing and recording my voice as I drew. When I was done, I hit the "play" button and they were amazed and hooked! After supper tonight, I found Lucille talking to the iPad as she drew. Mind you, I only showed her one time and she already had it figured out.
Yes, today's child is techno-savvy! Some of us grew up with technology being a green screened computer with rainbow disks, others a DVD player vs a cassette vs an 8-track vs a record, etc. Remember the cordless phone? The caller ID box? The pager? All old school to our little ones!
For a moment, I was amazing to my children, however, in the next moment, my five year old daughter amazed me! See below:
http://www.screenchomp.com/t/sm4gcVaDkAdS
Impressionable and striving for knowledge and technology... How can we use this to our advantage? Well, as we were waiting on the couch for supper to finish cooking I pulled up YouTube and began playing Christian music videos. It turns out my oldest knew many of the songs I was playing, being that he heard the songs at school and church. As the words flashed by, he sang along with me to the tunes and, eventually, even Gabriel joined in.
Another insight I have gained regarding technology is to have the patience to allow my children (and students for that matter) the opportunity to explore and try things out on their own. Telling them how to do something and having them mock my exact steps is not as exciting as seeing them make the discoveries themselves, laden with barriers along the way, until they triumphantly figure out how to solve a problem themselves.
Interesting... When I get frustrated when the answers aren't clear, our Father watches in silence, knowing that, if He told me the answer, I wouldn't value the discovery that lay ahead. He knows assisting us too soon in our struggles will only create a "muted" joy. Therefore, we must learn the path ourselves, making mistakes along the way. In the end, He will join us in celebrating each small joy, amplified to be much more powerful, unexplainable, indescribable than we ever imagined!
