Baby Babble

On Monday I was at Lake Wilderness Elementary School in Tina Newberry’s fifth grade social studies class. I was there to witness students using netbooks for the first time in the classroom.
It is part of the Tahoma School District’s efforts to help students at all age levels have access to the best kinds of technology tools with the idea that the skills learned will help them after they walk of the stage, diploma in hand, ready to head out into the world that is increasingly wired and wireless.
This kind of thing is funded by a technology levy passed in 2006 — a levy that took three attempts before it finally passed — which over its four year life will collect $10 million in taxes from residents of the district.
I have no problem admitting that as a resident of the district, I voted for the levy, and would do so again. At the time we didn’t have kids and hadn’t decided to have kids. But, there’s a whole lot of kids in Maple Valley, about one-third of the city’s 20,000-plus residents are under the age of 18.
And a handful of them live on my block not to mention the hundreds of youngsters that live in the surrounding neighborhoods.
My thought process then was if the kids who live around me are getting a good education and have plenty of opportunities to do the right thing they won’t go breaking into my car or my house.
Now, though, I realize that someday my own kid will be using these tools. Whoa.
As I stood next to Kevin Patterson, the district’s spokesman, and talked with him about how far technology has come just in the four years since the technology levy originally passed (which I wrote about then, too, and that’s crazy for me to wrap my mind around having been working in this community that long).
Then I thought, man, imagine what kind of cool stuff kids are going to have when Lyla is in grade school. Right now students are using netbooks to draw maps, create PowerPoint presentations — a skill I do not have and I consider myself quite tech savvy — and do online research.
And not just kids at Tahoma High, no, all the kids at the elementary level have access to these netbooks and eventually there will be 1,700 of them throughout the district.
Considering less than six months ago I bought myself a Toshiba netbook to tote around in my camera bag for doing interviews and other handy work-related things, this puts Tahoma on the edge of technology, not quite the bleeding edge because netbooks have been available for a few years now but in the past six months or so have really come into their own.
I am trying to envision what kind of cool stuff Lyla will be doing in kindergarten with technology, in fifth grade, in high school. It blows my mind.
My dad was an engineer, an O.G., and by that I mean original (tech) geek. When I was five years old I was playing video games on a black and white screen monitor on a computer my dad had at home. He had a VCR and a microwave in the early 1980s when they were still novelties.
I remember sitting next to him on the couch when I was 7 years old, watching “Dennis the Menace” on Nickelodeon, nodding inattentively while keeping one eye on the TV as he explained how batteries worked.
So, here I am, 31 years old. My dad is long gone. But the geek factor is clearly an inherited trait.
Look in my camera bag for an example. Inside is a Nikon D80 with an 18-135mm lens attached, a speed flash in another compartment, and a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens. Also in there is my netbook, a digital voice recorder (the high tech version of a tape recorder minus the tapes) and my 120GB iPod classic with Bose TriPort headphones.
If someone got hold of my camera bag they would have well over $1,500 in gadgets.
Add to that my love of cell phones. I have the newest BlackBerry available, the Bold 2, which replaced my year-old Bold. I ordered it from at&t with my upgrade the day before I went into the hospital to have Lyla. It was waiting on my door step when we brought her home.
Normally I would have torn into that box right away and set up my new toy.
It took me almost four days. A newborn is kind of hard not to focus on.
Quite a few folks jokingly asked what cell phone Lyla would be getting. Heh.
Oh, I already have a couple cheapo spares ready for her to play with when she starts reaching for my BlackBerry. And she will.
Now I also wonder how much will she be into technology.
According to a guy name Ian Jukes who spoke to Tahoma teachers a couple years ago, kids these days are “digital natives” anybody over the age of 25 is a “digital immigrant.”
Pfft. Not me!
But, anyway, the point is this tech stuff is second nature to kids these days.
So, if I’m lucky, we won’t blame any tech geekiness on my genes and simply say Lyla’s just one of them “digital natives” Mr. Jukes talks about.
Meantime, how young is too young to give a kid their first cell phone?
Oh, you think I’m kidding. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The conversations I’m preparing to have with my daughter. I have to be prepared because every parent I know says time flies and before I know she’ll be graduating high school.
I think I’m going to stop envisioning the future of technology in Lyla’s lifetime and just enjoy her being a baby.
The rest of the stuff, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Yeah.