Response Week 6
Tony Reetz
The Question:
Discuss how engaging with the medium and the machine allows you to learn about the technology -- or how you are growing and changing as a learner through this online interaction.
The Medium, the Machine, the Technology
Growing and Changing as an Online Learner
Introduction
As a little kid, I liked to draw and I liked to build things. The only problem was that I wasn't very good at either. My drawings never came close to what I saw in my mind's eye, and my structures were precarious piles of scrap lumber.
I was also a downhill ski racer, competing in my first national event at the age of ten. I came to the place by my mid-teens where neither the difficulty of the course nor severe weather conditions intimidated me. The only problem was that my body couldn't take the stresses I was putting it through.
Now that I'm an adult, I've found a new avenue for pushing my limits. I'm a schoolteacher who uses a computer for everything.
The Medium
I use the computer for writing lesson plans. I've done it from the simple to the elaborate, HyperStudio, multimedia, internet linked 15 megabyte per week variety.
My principal wanted a hard copy before I could get my summer paychecks.
I use the computer for grades and report cards. I've got MS Excel spreadsheets for everything that's on the Intermediate Grade Report, and they feed into a MS Word file that print merges into an ASD Student Grade Report. I'm pretty proud of it and think back to when I was doing my grades with GradeAid or whatever that was on the IIe. Once when I was printing up my progress reports, I touched off a static spark to the computer cart.
I lost everything.
Two weeks ago, I started noticing that the 3C Timer application I use for math drills, silent reading, etc. was erratically jerking through the seconds. By the end of the day, I was getting some really strange errors in general. The next morning, I couldn't open any of my lesson plans files for not only the current year, but even files from the previous year.
I erased everything and wrote zeroes all over my hard drive.
Now I'm really pushing the frontiers of educational technology and taking an online course. Yes sir. Advanced Microsoft Word. Only problem is, the Advanced MS Word for version 5 that I took years ago was much more advanced. We were writing Postscript instructions to print watermarks. We were inserting invisible characters. We had a real live instructor that answered questions. We had detailed, hard copy instructions.
I hate to admit it, but I've lost motivation for the ASDO Advanced MS Word course to the point that I haven't worked on it for two weeks.
The Machine
When I was racing on the Can Am circuit, ski equipment company reps would provide us with free, prototype gear for testing and name recognition. I've still got a pair of Olin Test skis from 1974 that were second in serial number. It was good for the manufacturers, and good for us.
Now, in a safer form of a thirst for performance, I'm having to push around a little laptop with hardly any RAM, a very slow processor (by today's standards) and skinny little telephone wires while I trying to connect to the planet. I'm one of the fortunate ones, too. A good portion of my colleagues are still looking at the Apple IIe's, which were brand new soon after I first started teaching in 1982.
At home, I can get into my ASDO course with Communicator, but I can't with Explorer. I prefer Explorer.
I can get into the OCE egroups site at work with both, but I can't at home with anything.
Communicator shows my password in the address window (which is bad), but Explorer does not (which is good).
Explorer will not let me participate in a chat, but Communicator will.
Is there such a thing as road rage on the information superhighway?
The Technology
Anyway, I'm so impressed with the technology for improving instructional delivery for students and communication amongst my peers that I've started my own egroup for ASD fifth grade teachers at http://www.egroups.com/group/grade5/info.html. I was so excited about seeing if it would work after I set it up, that I discreetly emailed just the elementary schools in the district. In my excitement, I forgot to turn off "Return Receipt".