Thing 6 Blog about Technology

I remember back in the stone ages when my son was 2 or 3, he's now 28, and I guess you'd say the dinosaur version of Game boy came out. It was some kind of toy, I've forgotten exactly what it did, but it boasted having "new" computer technology. When I bought it for him for Christmas my friends all gave me grief. I remember saying that computers would be his future and that it would be much better for him to grow up using them than to learn as an adult. Never in my wildest imagination did I imagine all the uses there would be for computers. And I was right, he uses a computer like it is an extension of his body.

I worked for Amway Corporation back then. I remember when they built a room for the new computer they were getting. The room was sealed and temperature controlled. It was a very big deal. The purchase of the computer opened up a new department at Amway called Data Processing. The ladies in Data Processing had funny little machines that they used to type information onto data cards which were then fed to the computer. I tried learning how to type on the machines but it was like a foreign language to me since it was all in bytes or some such thing. I made too many mistakes and they didn't want me to work in that department either.

Someone else posted a list of all the things we did not have as children that are now a part of our lives. When I think of what is available today that was not available when my own dad was alive it boggles the mind. My dad passed in 1999, nine short years ago, and I wonder just how many changes there have been in technology in that short time? So I Google d Technology available since 1999 and found that there are only 2,500,000 scholarly articles available for technology since 1999. Shoot Google was only one year old in 1999, and I know my dad had no clue what a Google was.

My good friend retired a year ago and moved to the state of Washington. We email frequently. I sent her the address to my Blog and said check it out. I also, in the same email, attached a photo of me brushing out a calf at a fair. So I asked her how she liked the picture of me and Norman (the calf). Her reply? I read your Blog but I did not find the picture of you with a cow. (Now when she checks my Blog again I'm sure that she will give me all kinds of grief for posting this little story). But she is a reluctant computer user and does not particularly like it so it was not a surprise to get that response from her and I know that she is not alone in her dislike of most things technical. My mother-in-law (also deceased) refused to drive the last van my father-in-law purchased. Why? Because the gas pedal could be moved to fit the driver preference. She couldn't deal with that technology so she drove the truck instead.

What about the technology at the Olympics? I watched swimming the other night and I swear the other guy beat out Michael Phelps but the computer says nope, Phelps won. Would he have been declared the winner when judged by the camera? What about the swim wear the Olympians are wearing? They're space age technology and apparently are shaving seconds off the swimmers scores and the swimmers are consequently setting new world records. I doubt if Mark Spitz could have envisioned today's swimmers wearing space age technology.

When I visited MSU last Monday we walked by the College of Education and I told the kids that I took so many computer classes when I was attending MSU that I had a math/science minor. I always found that funny. I had so many classes in computers that I received a math/science minor. It's on my teaching certificate so I suppose I could be asked to teach one of those subjects in middle school...and I would not be able to do so. Everything I learned in those computer classes has long been forgotten which I'm sure is a good thing since all of it is outdated. That's my worry for my special ed students, is what I'm going to teach them this year going to be worthless before they hit high school or will it ease the way into what's coming in their future?