Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time

This looks amazing. It will be blocked by BESS.

This was the kicker for me:

It all reminds me of the time last year when I got to an event and the person in charge had copied, collated, stapled and distributed six paper pages that she had printed of my link-filled wiki online to 50 or so participants.

“It’s a wiki,” I said. “You can’t click the links on paper!”

“I know,” she replied. “I just need to have paper.”

Um, no. You don’t.

That’s going to be us. I am just sure of it.

Granted they don’t use that type of knowledge regularly (what teenager is asked “Is Europe a country or a continent?” regularly?) But it is basic common knowledge that they should know so that they don’t look like a moron regularly.

I was born 20 years too early. I was not a Rhodes scholar by any strech, but I had a good dose of common sense and I paid attention. If you are a high school senior today and have a basic understanding of specific knowledge, you are already head-and-shoulders above many of your peers.

# Percentage of first-year applicants who applied online in 2003: 33%.
# Percentage of applicants who did last year: 89%.
# Year that an incoming Amherst College class first created a Facebook group so that they could socialize and otherwise get to know each other prior to arriving on campus: 2006.
# By the end of August 2008 the total number of members and posts at the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook group: 432 members and 3,225 posts.
# Students in the class of 2012 who registered computers, IPhones, game consoles, etc. on the campus network by the end of the day on August 24th, the day they moved into their dorm rooms: 370 students registered 443 devices.
# Number of students in the class of 2012 who brought desktop computers to campus: 14.
# Number that brought iPhones/iTouches: 93.

And I am running dittos and using a textbook. Sheesh. I have never felt like an old lady driving a 1970 Pinto in the slow lane of the 6 lane super highway. Teaching is passing us by.