In the year 3000….Student Examples

Cue the comical falsetto voice and Conan O’Brien’s bit of looking into the future. For those that might not stay up late enough to have seen the sketch, no worries, as it’s just a simple little game that the favorite late night talkshow host plays in order to make fun of what sort of trouble celebrities, politicians, and others will get into in the future.

For my 3rd graders though, the year 3000 will be less humorous, and much more exciting than today’s world, because they were busy these past few weeks inventing the technology of the future. I thought that someone else out there might be interested in seeing what they invented, because you never know when one of them might just grow up and invent it!

The short project was fairly straight forward. I had them all think of technology that we have today, and then place it in a venn diagram (or double bubble map, whichever you perefer). I then had them talk about how useful each piece of technology was, and how long it had been around. I suggested that they make predictions on what pieces of technology we have today that we would still have in the future. They moved those pieces of technology into the middle of the diagram, signifying those would still be around in the future, while those they left in the first bubble would no longer be used. I then had them imagine what type of technology they could expect to be invented in the future, and have them place it in the second bubble. Since we were using Kidspiration I had them use the symbol maker tool to draw what their new inventions would look like. And while most bubbles were filled with hover cars and automatic pencils (they write for you), there were some real standouts, including a star catcher, an electric eel lighter, and a tooth phone. It always amazes me just how creative elementary students can be before they lose all of their childhood playfulness in middle and high school. Click on any of the images in the post to see the full size version.