Fun with Teaching and Technology

          Last year I thought about begging for use of the computer room at NEU to teach my composition class from. I was jealous of all the 302 TAs who got to teach there twice a month.
          Then, they hand me lab time once a week and I panic?
          Well, not panic. Panic is reserved for tests and defenses. I'd use "confusion," but that feels overused in my lexicon. I was Uncertain.
          Unlike what the Duffelmeyer reading for tomorrow, however, it wasn't because I was afraid of giving up the traditional classroom and the authority in it. Please, please, take away my authority. (This might have something to do with my undergraduate education at a Mennonite school, where everything was about mutual respect and making explicit forms of authority and ideology built into our systems). I don't want to control them. Please don't call me Ms Clemons. Please don't think I have this all put together.
          In fact, the only TA in Duffelmeyer's essay I could relate to was the one who felt that she or he had to be at least as good at computers as his/her students. This, I think, is built into my own perfectionist personality, especially when it comes to science. Just because I didn't study it formally doesn't mean I can't talk about theoretical physics. I don't know what it means to NOT own a computer. I think better with a keyboard at my fingers. I can't compose with a pen and paper, except poems.
          In other words, I love Mr. Computer. And it seems ridiculous that, as attached as Tek (the name of my computer: Short for, of course, Technology, but spelled like Boston catcher and team Captain Jason Varitek writes his nickname) is to my lap and palms, I would be unable to figure out his friends in the labs. Or that some of his words and applications are beyond me, but not those younger than me. I've had extra years with him! I remember a time BEFORE Frontpage! Before Instant Messenger, when, to chat, one used mIRC and had to know how to locate nearby servers, "ping" people to determine "lag", and write cool scripts so that when someone said "bye" a picture of a waving frog came up in ASCII. But I can't link a network connection?!
          Hell, I remember when network connections were only accessable through DOS, and there were backslashes and "dir"s and all that fun stuff that my kids don't understand, but I do. But networking now is scary because there are so many more options, so many more dirs.
          I remember when one of my darling classmates hacked into our high school network to change his grades, making the stupid mistake of printing out the port information (so he could erase his footprints) from the library computer, and leaving the sheets in the machine.
          So of course I want to be better than my students. And I was relieved today when I had to show the students how to use a pdf file I'm not old yet.
          And when I had to explain how to attach files, I was excited because I had a teachable moment, and tried to show how this knowledge will be useful later.
          I'm sure some of the students were wondering why we did the exercise in the computer lab, a waste of technology time but it some of them looked more relaxed in that environment. And, despite my fears, they did talk to each other, I think because they could always look at the screens instead of each other. Some may find this detrimental. I say, "baby steps."