"The Fun They Had"

Two weeks ago in class someone mentioned that Karen had once read a story about how when Rip Van Winkle woke up he did not recognize anything but the school, for the school had not changed at all during his one-hundred year nap.

That got me thinking . . . I knew that at some point I had read a story where just the opposite was true. This has been irking me since last week, because I knew it was a story that I enjoyed that I had used with my students one year . . . but for the life of me I could not think of the name. Then today while I was planning it hit me . . . "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov!

If you've never read it, it's a pretty good story that illustrates how books and school will change from present day to 2157. Asimov is one of my favorite authors because he was so ahead of his time. Actually it's inaccurate for me to say "from present day to 2157", since he wrote this story in 1951, long before PCs, the Internet and Web 2.0!

If you'd like to read the story you can find it here: "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov.