Sending My First Email

Koding Kurriculum
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

Of all people, it had been my grandmother that taught me how to send an email. It was about ’96, and the image itself was fairly nondescript, though much of my memory was captured through a nine-year-old’s filter of emotions and color. My family and I huddled around the PC in awe of the boxy Juno interface. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but I experienced my first creative digital spark in our family office from the most unlikely of places — a small town, country-born, septuagenarian woman with a deep appreciation for learning and writing.

“Hi Grandma!”. Click. Dial-tone. Wait five minutes… Sent.

My family and I had never seen anything like it before, but I remember how the machine in our office mysteriously made the world smaller that day. I also remember the childish feeling of power and identity. I could send her a message, and within an hour she would get it.

What else could this thing do?

I imagine that many other thirty-somethings have similar experiences throughout their life. Maybe not with an email, but maybe with Oregon Trail or Print Shop or their first writable CD-ROM drive. From my perspective, the nineties were a playground of flash-in-the-pan electronics and dial-up internet. I had the luxury of my youth welcoming these opportunities to express and extend my imagination, unprotected by the defenses we construct as an adult. But it had been a passionate and fearless mentor that brought these opportunities to life, helping me to navigate the dangers that come with power and identity until I could handle them for myself.

Likewise, I watch my two-year-old niece interact and develop within her world of touchscreens, and cannot help but be reminded of sending my first email. From now until the end of her life it will always have been this way, and these changes will only continue to accelerate. She will have her own moments where handfuls of new technology strike her fancy in an unexpected way, and they will follow along the same fleeting pattern that all other technologies go. They will begin to die just as soon as they rush into her life.

I believe with this observation comes the lesson that children need to be prepared for the digital world in a way that they were not fifteen years ago, and further twenty five years before that. Changes in computer science are moving at an exponential pace. Business is radically different. Social structures and communication are radically different. And with these changes comes an idea that the term “life skills” no longer apply to writing a check. Both that check and your cursive font are a thing of the past, held on only by my generation and those older. Instead, one’s preparedness to handle digital change could be the difference between getting a job or not, or worse yet having their identity stolen (and money). Children are naturally curious, and having a proper guide like my grandmother is an important component to help nurture their technological maturity.

I would be remiss by not stating that I hope Koding Kurriculum aids in the development of educators and students alike. We are grateful of organizations like Code.org, the Smithsonian, and Scratch similarly passing the baton, and making it easy for educators to integrate STEM-related content into their classroom. This post won’t likely reach the masses, but if it inspires one person to teach another how to send their first email, I’ll consider it a success.

Karl Haviland

Koding Kurriculum

Written by

Bringing the worlds of technology and education together.

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