I have a confession to make here. One of my greatest anxieties about going back to college was the fear that my technological ineptitude would be exposed, mocked, ridiculed and blared from Mount Kilimanjaro itself. The babies of today are born with the genetic make-up to program a DVR machine and hack into the thickest firewall. They are handed a cell phone along with their first solid foods. But we old-timers find all this new-fangled gadgetry to be a tad overwhelming and more than a little intimidating.
So when I made the momentous decision to head back to the classroom and get that second degree, I had visions of spending three semesters with a perpetual deer-in-the-headlights look. It truly was my greatest insecurity. What if I’m helplessly lost from Day One? What if I can’t keep up? I wasn’t too worried about the heavy course load or keeping up with the reading and projects. Raising four kids…now THAT’S work. College-level academics? No sweat.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t a complete techno idiot. I know how to navigate the internet, and I own a gadget or two. But the classroom is so heavily endowed with technology now. I just kept wondering if it WAS possible to teach an old dog new tricks (woof).
The first day of classes at University of Mary found me lugging my laptop into the Great Abyss of Newest Technology. These 20-year-olds would be running laps around me and I waited for that first “Uhhhhhhhh” moment when I would have to confess to my instructors that I had no clue what they were talking about. I REALLY hate to feel stupid, don’t you? It’s one of life’s greatest irritants. So I waited to be shamed.
Know what? That moment never came. To my great astonishment (and mighty joy), I kept up perfectly fine with those young’ uns. IN FACT, there was a time or two that I had to explain something technological to a classmate. Boy, did I relish THAT!
The great irony of it all is, I kinda’ became an advocate for updated technology in the classroom. During student teaching, I submitted my school in the Pepsi Refresh Project to try to win money for document cameras and SMART boards. We didn’t win the Pepsi money, but after a couple of local TV interviews about it, my school decided to just bite the bullet and purchase those items anyway.
OK, so that’s the long detour to get to the point of this story. TODAY, for the very first time, I finally used my document camera during class (its been sitting on my desk for two months). I feel like I have been reborn! Remember the old projector-in-the-classroom days when your exhausted teacher would drag that lighted monstrosity out? They worked best with the overhead lights out, which meant that the 7,0000 watt beacon sitting in the belly of The Beast shone like the Bat Signal in Gotham City. If you ever made the mistake of looking directly into the lamp, you experienced instant blindness and possibly permanent retinal damage. If you stood within 3 feet of the thing, you started to sweat profusely from the incredible heat it radiated. Your teacher was exhausted because he or she had to lug around a machine with the roughly the same weight as a boulder.
Enter today’s version. This little jewel is tiny, weighs less than a pound, and can be set anywhere I can take my laptop. It doesn’t need transparencies, you simply use whatever document you wish, set it under the camera, and away you go.
Today we did math together using my newest toy. I put a blank worksheet under the camera, plugged in my projector adapter that shines images from my computer to my whiteboard (no special screen needed), and my first grade darlings could follow along and see exactly what I wanted them to do. Everyone can see a clear image. No guessing. There’s not one bad seat in the house. It was revolutionary!! The math lesson went smoothly and not one time did I hear, “I don’t get it!” Or “I can’t see what you’re doing!”
PLUS, they got to pretend they were on TV as they took turns smiling into the camera and seeing themselves projected onto the whiteboard. It was teaching at its best.
Well, I think I’m in love. …
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