In the 1980s, a trilogy of sci-fi films were made called Back to the Future. In the time-traveling film, several characters from the 1980s traveled ahead 30 years landing in 2015. October 21, 2015 to be exact. The film makers made projections about what they thought the world might look like in 2015 including technology and clothing. Some of the things like video-conferencing, 3D films and using our finger prints electronically for identification were fairly accurate. Some ideas like hover boards, flying cars, self-tying shoes and self-drying jackets were not. (Some of these items have actually been invented, but they aren't as wide-spread as the film predicted.)
Well, on such a special day, we couldn't just go about our regular business. Instead, we took the entire day to celebrate "Back to the Future" and talk about what it might look like 30 years from now.
On Tuesday, we visited a traveling "museum" of "ancient" technology artifacts. There were video recorders, record players, early flip phones, a rotary phone, a slide projector, type writers and more. The students loved looking at them and seeing how much technology has changed just in the last half century.
Wednesday morning, we started the day by watching a few short clips of Back to the Future II. The students loved looking at what the film makers thought life would be like at this time. We discussed what they got right and what they did not. We talked about how much life (technology in particular) has changed in the last 30 years and how it might change in the next 30 years. Then, the students took to designing their own ideas. Students designed cars, medicines, classrooms, devices and more all focused on how life may be different in 30 years time.
After activity we watched a clip from
The Jetsons, which although it is predicted for 2062, still had several ideas correct. We read a book that takes place nearly one hundred fifty years from now where a robot does all of the work. The students realized that perhaps having too much technology can be unhealthy. Then, using some ideas about what the kids had seen from CNN Student News, they wrote a news stories about what might be on a broadcast thirty years time. One of my favorites included the idea that mosquitoes had been eliminated.
We started our afternoon with a clip from
Wall-E, another example of how too much technology in our lives may not always be a great thing. We read a story by the great Chris Van Allsburg (
Polar Express and
Jumanji) called
Just a Dream about a young boy who cares little about the environment and the world around him. He has vivid dreams about the future, seeing a world covered in garbage, smoke stacks, no trees and very little wild life. The boy is greatly affected by these dreams and changes his views and his actions. Later, he has another dream. He wakes up seeing a man pushing a push mower and sees clothes drying on a clothes line. The twist in the story? It is not the past that he saw but rather a simpler future.
The rest of the afternoon was spent designing another item we may see in the future and writing a journal entry of their day in thirty years when they are 40 (or close to it). Seeing what a child thinks adults do on a daily basis is always entertaining. I am going to hang on to these treasures they created for a while, but I took photos of them all and put them on our shared Google Drive folder, which you can access
here. Enjoy looking over their creations of the future and their interpretations on what they believe the future will be like.
We had a remarkable, fun-filled day! I'm so glad we could celebrate this, "Back to the Future" day together!
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