I love educator’s technology … Not!

It seems as if every time I push an assignment off to the last day technology slaps me in the face. It’s happened so often through the years that I find myself shocked when things go smoothly. I am a very busy person juggling a full time job, family of five and many years of college which often forces me to work on assignment rights up to the deadline. I remember back to the few classes I took online while earning my BFA. At this time, my internet was accessed through a dial up connection. Every time I tried to email or submit an assignment my connection would fail or just freeze completely, causing the computer to shut down. Ultimately, the hard shut down would cause me to loose the email I had just typed to my professor which made my blood pressure soar! I would then have to make several anxiety ridden attempts before success.
Many of my art history and art philosophy classes assigned online reading. The reading ranged from small articles to complete books. My computer would chug and chug attempting to down load this information. I would do chores in between downloading attempts forcing a mastering of multi-tasking. My tech anxiety would reach all time highs until finally calling my husband and requesting he print them from a high speed connection. He saved the day on many occasions! High speed internet finally became available in our area and we jumped on it. My technology anxiety eased greatly with this upgrade!
Most recently, on the first night of my Technology for Educators class we were told to sit at our lap tops and submit an entry on blackboard. We would have thirty minutes to tell the professor how we would like to implement technology in to our own classrooms when we become teachers. My words were really flowing, my mind felt very clear and my body relaxed. About twenty minutes into the writing my thumb taps an unknown key on the laptop and my words vanish. There was probably something simple that needed to be done to retrieve my information but sheer panic set in instead. I quickly tried to recapture my thoughts in the ten minutes that followed. I figure I looked like an idiot with my submission! I then stewed about it for the entire hour drive home from grad school, before deciding to type all blackboard submission in a word document first to prevent this disaster from happening again.
I now seem to be experiencing a generational technology issue now. I can remember my parents and grandparents talking about certain struggles with things like VCR’s, cassette players, and telephones. They just couldn’t seem to get it, nor did they want to! Simple tech task and instructions seemed impossible for the “older” generation to grasp. Well, the day has arrived where I have begun to feel the gap in my own understanding of technology compared to my children. My kindergarten and fourth grade sons were more familiar with the smart board and laptop than I was. They both taught me something on the subject! Oh, and then there’s the i-pods and playstation games, forget about it … I will never catch up!