The Google Car

Last week at our Take A Peek At Prep morning I had the great pleasure of speaking briefly to a group of mums who are about to embark on their child’s 13 years of schooling next year.  One of the things I mentioned was how much the world is changing.  The world that we know and enjoy today is not the one that our current Junior School students will graduate into in a decade or so.  ‘Duh!  Of course!’, I hear you say.

But it’s true isn’t it?  I went through school in the 70’s and 80’s, finishing Year 12 in ‘85.  I can still remember my Year 4 teacher standing in the doorway of our classroom smoking!  I have vivid memories of teachers hitting kids with sticks across the knuckles and of the then ‘old-fashioned’ desks we had that still had holes for ink wells in them.  My generation was still using classroom equipment that was designed for a very different era, my mum’s era.

Anyway, my school days were different than my children’s by a mile.  My children have gone through school though in an interesting time of change.  Both of them were Primary School kids when the iphone and ipad came along.  They remember a time before 1:1 laptops and ipads in schools.  The old-fashioned computer lab is a thing of the past, a room full of massive boxes and huge monitors used to look and feel so modern, now it just looks like yesterday.  LCD, retina display laptops are everywhere, kids are using touch screens and even cabling is now irrelevant with the ubiquitous use of wifi.  I can’t remember the last time I actually plugged something into a network point.  WiFi, Bluetooth, the cloud, smart watch, I don’t even look at my phone for texts now, I look at my watch.

Man.  The shift is so fast, so sustained, so overwhelming.  And it’s all in schools.  If there is one institution that has to be at the very front of what is happening it is schools.  WE are the ones responsible for emerging young adults into this crazy world.  Preparing them for life that we remember as their parents, would be like my teachers in the 70’s and 80’s preparing me for a life of ink wells and slates.  Unconscionable. 

Anyway, back to my original point.  I have a confession to make.  I was wrong when is spoke to that group of mums last week.  I informed them that their child may never need to actually get a license because we are already well on the way to self-driving cars, that the Google Car has done over a million kilometers already by itself.

It’s 5 million.

In 2009 Google launched the self-driving car project.  By 2015 it had done a million kilometers (well a few of them had collectively), now, just 3 years later that number has jumped exponentially to 5 million kilometers.  The project is now called WAYMO and is an independent company whose sole aim is to get autonomous vehicles on our roads.  They exist, they are being used, it’s amazing.  5 million kilometers completed!

We have to be so careful that we do not cling onto our past.  We have to be so careful as parents, as educators, as a community that we are right at the front of our understanding of this stuff and that we are preparing our kids for their future in this world.

Collaboration, innovation, self-direction, synthesis.  These, and more, are the soft skills that our kids need now and moving forward.  The iphone is 10 years old.  It changed the world.  Anytime now the Google Car is going to hit us, it will change everything once again.  I couldn’t wait for my son to get his P’s so he could pick me up from the pub.  Your child may never need theirs.  What will they need instead?

Thank goodness that some things don’t change though.  Good schools still need good teachers, children still need stable and supportive families, our bodies need good food and appropriate rest.  We all need people in our lives both to care for us and to care for.  Little kids still need play-dough and plastic scissors, big kids still need Physics and Shakespeare, teachers need to be in supportive relationships with mums and dads and mums and dads need a pat on the back for all the things they do out of love for their kids.  And we all need to be loved by He whose name is Love.

Buen Camino