EWP

1. “Describe your experience with this week’s technology (Week 2 is the tabulas community weblog).  Don’t judge at this point, simply describe in good detail.”

 So far, so good.  We’re still having trouble with my net – but a new wireless card and some cussing and sweating seem to have helped keep me online long enough to write… now, since the girls are BOTH teething, i’m seriously considering using my mother’s bourbon suggestion so i can get some WORK done!!!!!!

Seriously, though, Either i’m getting into the swing of things, or this meduim is easier – for some unknown reason – to use.  I’m having far fewer ”(*%^#*&^$(*%” moments with tabula than i (still) am with moos and the blogs.

” 2.Select a sentence/section from the writing you did this week and discuss it or describe a moment in the writing process that stood out to you.”

hmmm…. frustration, still, but on the home front, not here.  Actually concentrating here has helped keep me calm on the home front.  Reading the blogs and responses of the others’ helped ground me… sort of like watching Jerry Springer, to be honest.  I was able to say, in one case – “thank god i’m not the only one feeling stressed about time!!!!”, and in the other, i was able to step away from my own problems, empathize, and realize life ain’t so bad right now.

“3. What ideas did you generate as a result of your writing/work this week?”

More than i can count!  Lots of memories; thought a lot about my classes, and esp., one class in particular.  Thinking about what i always tell myself to do – start a journal, and write. Maybe the blog?

“4. Include anything else that comes to your mind (maybe some connections you have made with the readings and teaching or something in the MOO transcript from the week before inspires you to comment).”

i know the last Monday class was a flop in some respects, but i had a great time, even if it was simply making comments and being silly a lot of the time.  It was just the ice breaker i needed to get involved and less antsy about the whole thing.

I really like the classifications, native and imigrant.  Like Kelly, I think i’m somewhere between the two, even though when I was growing up there WERE no home computers; or rather, very few.  But like my parents’ generation, we grew up watching the technology happen, evolve, mold us and society around it.  When my parents were growing up, there was no space travel, manned or otherwise.  Now, i have hopes that when my son is writing HIS reflections, travel to the moon or elsewhere will be as commonplace as satellites giving us the news.

My first experience with anything “high tech”, believe it or not, goes back to a color TV.  We had none, and mom wouldn’t allow one until our old, 15 inch B & W died.  My dad literally tossed the daggone thing down the stairs, and it wouldn’t die.  It was her hint, however, to let us get a color TV.  I was in high school, and my brother and i nearly killed it playing tennis and “Pong” using the only game console out in the mid 80′s (i don’t even remember what it was called).  The first time i ever saw the “horse of a different color” actually CHANGE colors, i was in college.

Then my brother (the “brain”) got a Commodore 64.  I had NO interest.  bleh. Write on IT?? Not see the words on paper?  Are you INSANE??

I was dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age post 1990 by my advisor for my Master’s, who thought it was criminal I was still writing using pen and paper.  She required i do all my work on floppy (remember those old 5 1/4 ” ones??), and turn it in that way, including my thesis and dissertation  agruments / justifications. grrrrrrrrrrr

So my dad got me a “luggable,” lovingly called Igor – 70 lbs if it was an ounce, 4 ” green screen, and a key board attached by a 5″ cord.  I hated that thing.  But i used it.

I got addicted to using the net once I moved to SC.  I had used the computer for writing essays and lesson plans (after i’d written and hashed it out on paper, of course) for the 7 years i’d been teaching, but i had no net access, and neither did the school i worked at.  In this tiny little SC town i lived and worked in, i had DSL at my house, and net in my class room.  I was hooked.  I used it for EVERYTHING – lessons, info, chatting (once I was divorced), … even found my long-lost high school sweet -heart through the net.

I took it on myself to learn as much as I could to be an effective USER of the new technology.  How to use the programs, install software, write basic code, fix hardware problems… basically, i becames a jack of all trades as far as the COMPUTER itself is concerned.  So when it comes to “talking the tak” with my kids, i can understand them, even if my “language” is a bit old-fashioned for them.  Now i use the net 85% of the time for planning my class activities, and am an EverQuest (aka EverCrack) fanatic.

But for writing?  I encourage my kids to write on the computer and edit later; i encourage them to even turn in their work on disc as well as paper… but i still want – NEED – that paper.  I still teach notecard usage, and edit on hard copy.

Do they think it’s silly? A waste of time? yes… but when your computer freezes up or “burps” and you lose what you forgot to save… those note cards and that paper becomes gold. 

This is the first time – short of emails which are an average of 5 lines long – that i’m writing straight to computer, and NOT writing it out long hand first… and it’s KILLING me!!

Do I agree we as old-tech or no tech teachers have a harder time communicating to our kids? Yes.  Do I agree their actual BRAIN may be different? Yes, even to that.  Perhaps what we label as ADD or ADHD is no more than a reflection of the changing brain patterns we are inheriting from our tech-saturated kids.  Do we need to change our teaching styles? … yes, to a point.  We can’t lose sight that, no matter HOW tech heavy our life becomes, we STILL have books, and manuals, and labels, and we still have snail mail, and resumes, and places where low-tech is not only used, but preferred.  We can’t STOP teaching that way, simply because technology has entered our lives so intimately.

Now – try to tell that to some of our non-writing, non-tech comrades in the trenches… and if you come back whole from the encounter, I’ll hand you a purple heart myself.