From apollo xi to berlin’s wall break-down

ESSAY

From Apollo XI to Berlin’s wall break-down

Five kids were gathered around a black box hearing it talk. They were amazed. It was a walkie-talkie and it was 1977. At next block’sschool there were 20 kids staring at that freaky boy sitting on a bench, he was laughing while he was looking at it. That “freaky” boy was just reading a book. What had changed? Kids had shifted theirinterest from books and knowledge to items related to information technology.

Learning that used to be acquired by playing outdoors games with friends became an individual challenge against theconsole. Boardgames such as Chess or “Monopoly” went out of style; as a result, arithmetic skills and knowledge of language were decreasing. During the nineties catching a porwerful pokemon was themost important achievement for a kid. Besides, at school, sport games weren’t almost played anymore but instead portable video consoles like Game Boy Color were; that´s why talks changed and so didlearning.

In the nineties it became easier to access information in order to accomplish school tasks. To all generations before, the only way to do this was researching in books or askingteachers. This information was usually reliable for it had been written or given by scholars. In contrast, at the end of the twentieth century, students usually went to chat-rooms in order to do theirhomework. The only thing they were supposed to do was to cut and paste and then print as many pages as their money could buy. Not only hadn’t they read what they had printed, but also this information wasmost of the times inaccurate, because anyone could´ve easily uploaded unsustained information to websites.

During the seventies free time might be spent to develop artistic and athleticskills through playing games and doing off-school activities such as music lessons, for instance. Twenty years later, free time is spent (or wasted?) hanging around at electronic devices. Extra-skills...