Our 12-year-old son Andrew has just started Grade 7. In his school they refer to this as the first year of junior high. With this transition, the teaching seems to entail doing an increasing number of projects.

I’m amazed at the difference in approach to school projects - compared to the many years ago that I did them.

Contrast these two scenarios.

I used to have to walk to the local library. I would then pour over Encyclopedia Britannica and a few other limited sources of information. I would then transcribe relevant paragraphs by hand into a notebook. I would occasionally make a very bad (but expensive) photocopy of a picture. At times I made pencil sketches of illustrations. I would then traipse home, and clean up the mess into a semi-neat project.

Fast forward 35 years …

My son strolls into my home office, and fires off a few Copernic or Google searches on his computer ( had a spare one after WordPress made my developer redundant). He cuts and pastes text and images directly into a Word document. He uses SnagIt to copy images off the screen, and touches them up in Xara Xtreme. He then prints out quality color images and text snippets to make posters, or creates a multimedia PowerPoint presentation - including sound files. His last PowerPoint presentation was at a level not far off what I’ve seen presented at conferences.

This at 12 years old!

Actually it’s not just at school projects that things are soooo different.

The other day Andrew mentioned that he wanted to open a savings account. Instead of just going with us to open one at our bank, he visited each major bank’s website, and viewed the details of each junior saving account on offer. He selected an option that we would not have considered. Why? Not because it isn’t the best option - just that it’s offered by a bank that we don’t use.

I shouldn’t have been surprised - about 4 months ago Andrew insisted that I load RapidFormatter on his PC. He asked me for suggestions on a couple of website topics, and helped select the domain names. Without referring to the RNW manual (to my disgust!) he quickly created a couple of passable website themes. To be honest, they’re better than some of my customers. He Googled for affiliates, picked those with the best terms, and signed me up. Looks like I could have a useful assistant fairly soon!

Yesterday I was reading a comment by Allen Says in the Warrior Mastermind. He wrote how pleased he is that he has developed a systematic money-making process that his children are now using to make good incomes. Not only his children - he’s sharing it in the Mastermind…

With the skills that Andrew has already developed - research, graphics, collating information, affiliate selection, website development - I think he too will thrive in the internet world - if later on he chooses to do so.