A while back, I thought back to my first computer, and the associated peripherals that were involved (discs, joysticks etc).
It amuses me to think that technology that is already obsolete is still being used today in icon form – case and point being the save icon:
The kids I teach have never seen a floppy disk, yet that is the icon they need to click on to save a document. If we had to create an icon for ’save’ today, what would it look like? A cloud? A microchip? A thumb-drive?
This in turn prompted me to think about what icons are more familiar to our students.
Embed and Link are the icons of today’s generation.
And do you know what? That’s just how I think it should be.
I want kids to be creating, sharing and linking. It’s what learning is all about!
Credits:
Everaldo Coelho
cfccreativemedia
GNOME Icon Artists
By: Jim W on December 12, 2009 at 6:06 am
I have often thought the same thing, the save icon is all ready a thing from the past. What other icons seem quaint now?
By: colingally on December 16, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I tweeted about the floppy disk icon a while back.
It’s so strange it has not changed.
Students don’t know what it means, they call it the “Blue Square”
By: Megan on January 13, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Blue square is what one grade 3 class I was working with used as well.