Instructify

BY KEVIN HODGSON

What student doesn’t like to imagine what their life will be like in 25 years? Given the rate of technology advancements, it’s an interesting exercise in imagination to conceive the future. Amy Zuckerman and James Daly (along with illustrator John Manders) do just such an exercise in their picture book 2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids, a fascinating glimpse into how they envision the world. This is not all fantasy either, as Zuckerman and Daly consulted scientists, engineers, technology experts, and “futurists” about what might be possible in a few decades, given the world as it is right now.

Not surprisingly, concepts like climate change play a role in some of the devices in the book (such as clothes that convert energy back to the grid and school buildings that can be pieced together like Lego units). In fact, I was struck by how some of the ideas in this book coincide nicely with the vision put forth in Thomas Friedman‘s book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, which dealt with ways to change our thinking around energy.

The pages in 2030 that center on a typical school say are most interesting, too, as students create multimedia projects in 3D media labs as collaborative projects, take virtual field trips to all cultures of the world (regardless of time period) from the comfort of their classrooms, and eat lunch made of soy products genetically designed to taste yummy.

Speaking of technological advancements, I’ll bet there isn’t a kid in this world who wouldn’t want to hop on one of the magnetic skateboards that make you feel like you are flying down paths at top speeds. Or have a dog collar that translates barks into English (would dogs ask for anything other than food, I wonder?).

Zuckerman and Daly add a nice little kicker to the end, too, when the day ends with a boy reaching for a type of entertainment that is “light and easy to handle. The insides are soft and perfect for viewing, and it has provided kids and adults entertainment for many centuries. You drift off to sleep … reading a book.”

The book is published by Dutton Children’s Books and it has an accompanying website that provides some additional resources.

Use in the classroom

This book and website could easily spark a very interesting discussion and project in which students envision the future. Given the guidelines of the book, which make clear that the vision is based in reality, what might the world look like for young people in 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 years? You might want to just focus on schools, which is what I have done, and have students reconceptualize what education and schools might look like in the future. The ancillary discussion is, what are we lacking right now that technology might be able to fix?

2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids

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