Technology
September 4
It was a big week at school. There is lots of stuff going on. Student stuff that happened so fast and frequently that one would have thought I was writing a preposterous movie.
There was also the stuff that envelopes me in a kind of numbness. It falls under the catergory of Technology. For much of my experience school opened the day after Labor Day and I was ready to go-although it was always tough to give up summer.
Then scramble would begin:
- Did the programs get installed?
- All of of them?
- The printers too?
- What about the student login’s
The answers would be yes, what, huh and a ream of student logins left stealthily on a chair after hours. It did get better as the equipment became more reliable. I also learned more work arounds, developed better relationships and used more creative expletives.
I heard a viable description of a techie is someone who sleeps upside down in a closet. My experience attests to that description.
This year in Memphis, I am approaching the one month mark and I cannot log on to my desktop but my laptop connects. That alone would merit a simple shrug of a techie shoulder. There is also a carded system for printing, copying and scanning and that isn’t working either.
When I started teaching students had computers in the classroom for the first time. Those computers had more power than the one on board the lunar module that landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. The computer overloaded and Neil Armstrong had to look out the window to park on the moon.
I know the feeling best stated by Ralph Kramden in anger and frustration…”to the moon.”