The age of the autodidact

Ever so often, I hear parents complain about how their kid is watching too much TV. Well, most often you will find that the answer is that others in the house are spending a lot of time watching TV. The similar reasoning will be seen around a kid who reads a lot.

Ditto for the internet.
The trouble with the internet is that, it is very easy to get into the consumption oriented part of the internet - watch videos, play games and suchlike. Because it resembles what you have seen as media - TV, newspaper - they are all one sided - pure consumption.

The internet is a medium that will work for you the way you want it to work. Take youtube for instance. You can watch movie songs or you can watch it for seeing 'things to do/make' or perhaps upload what you made in the form of a video. Which do you think the kids will enjoy?

The current generation that is growing up today, has perhaps the best resources off the web yet.


The trick, perhaps is to not keep yourself (and your children) hooked only to the consumption part of the internet, but try and translate that into real world applications and skills. For example, Foldify is an app on the iPad that can be translated into the real world with some pretty cool models. Sciencetoymaker.org (a site which we have mentioned before) is another of those cool sites.

I have seen the little one learn to make various things in Lego from youtube. His latest idea is to learn drawing cars from the internet. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the internet is, perhaps, the worlds ultimate resource for the autodidact.

Ekalavya would be proud, would he not?

And this is not just for children. I have seen people learn zumba from the internet and quite a few other things. So, the question once again, what are you using your internet for?

(Developing thought - will work on this to make it a larger piece.)