For Every Thing There Is a Season
While I haven't been in education very long (15 years), many changes have occurred at the school level. Whatever happened to these items that I remember having in my early years of teaching? Let's retrogress to the teaching technology of the 80s and 90s.
1. The machine that you placed a carbon on and cranked by hand to make copies for your students--you know, the one with the purple ink that you loved to smell--I can't remember it's name because it has been so long since I've seen one much less used one.
2. Risograph--I think this is how you spell it. It's a step up from machine #1 because it could make hundreds of copies quickly, and you weren't required to hand crank it.
3. Dot matrix printers--these were great! You always had to make sure the paper was on track, and when it printed, it made a grinding noise. Well, maybe grinding isn't the write descriptor. The noise, if you were printing a long document, would lull you into a relaxed state because it was so repetitive. And you could tell when the printer came to a shorter sentence or was printing a single word. The BRRRRRTTTT sound it made would be just a BRT with longer stretches of silence as the print cartridge glided across the paper.
4. Paper for a dot matrix printer--the sheets were always attached to each other, and you could make banners with it easily. I loved printing out these banners and then coloring them in with my Crayola markers.
5. Computers with DOS operating systems--I've forgotten every key stroke that I had to learn to run one of these babies. I actually resisted learning how to use a computer until my last quarter in college (Spring 1992). I took a fiction writing class that semester and just could not endure the multiple drafts on my Brother typewriter.
6. My Brother typewriter. Man, I loved this typewriter. I wish I still had it. It was an electric typewriter, and I got it one year from my parents for Christmas. Typing was the best class I took in high school. I use it daily. I used my typewriter all the time as well. I typed every paper in college as an undergrad on that Brother typewriter, and any time I ran out of correction tape, I would cry. Thank goodness I typed well and had few errors. I even used it to type worksheets for my students my first year teaching.
7. Chalk boards--Can I just say that I don't really miss these? Whenever my fingernails would hit the board as I erased something quickly, my face and body would contort and I would begin my chicken dance. The squeal of nails on a chalkboard is worse than water boarding in my opinion. Other interesting accessories that came with the chalkboard were long pieces of wood covered with athletic socks to use as erasers. For some reason, these long erasers were preferable to the short black ones I used to clean by beating them against the telephone pole for my teacher in elementary school. I suppose in another ten years I'll be able to add dry erase boards to this part of my list, but not quite yet.
8. Small tape recorders that have the buttons at the bottom you use to play/record/fast forward/rewind/pause--I actually had three of these in my closet that I donated to the school library this year. They were great when students had to record something for an oral history project, for instance, but they were bulky and took up too much room in my supply cabinet. Now I'm writing a grant for podcast recorders. If the grant goes through, we'll be able to record small group discussions and use the recorders for collaborative or individual student projects which we can then post to the school website.
When looking back over my list, I realize that all of these changes have occurred because in some ways, educators have decided to work smarter and not harder (one of my mottoes). Instead of resisting the computer age, I joined the 21st century and am especially interested in how I can help my students use these new tools that are displacing the old methods of communicating in and out of school. Unfortunately, educators are too often Luddites who are either too scared or too set in their ways to change. Some technology tools I foresee working their ways into schools include social networking sites (Nings, Facebook, Twitter) in some form. Many schools block these sites for student safety reasons, but students are still using them at home. The resistance will be there until the Digital generation currently in schools becomes the ones running the schools. By then, we'll be focusing on applications no one has invented yet, and the arguments we now surrounding the use of technology in schools will be laughable.
1. The machine that you placed a carbon on and cranked by hand to make copies for your students--you know, the one with the purple ink that you loved to smell--I can't remember it's name because it has been so long since I've seen one much less used one.
2. Risograph--I think this is how you spell it. It's a step up from machine #1 because it could make hundreds of copies quickly, and you weren't required to hand crank it.
3. Dot matrix printers--these were great! You always had to make sure the paper was on track, and when it printed, it made a grinding noise. Well, maybe grinding isn't the write descriptor. The noise, if you were printing a long document, would lull you into a relaxed state because it was so repetitive. And you could tell when the printer came to a shorter sentence or was printing a single word. The BRRRRRTTTT sound it made would be just a BRT with longer stretches of silence as the print cartridge glided across the paper.
4. Paper for a dot matrix printer--the sheets were always attached to each other, and you could make banners with it easily. I loved printing out these banners and then coloring them in with my Crayola markers.
5. Computers with DOS operating systems--I've forgotten every key stroke that I had to learn to run one of these babies. I actually resisted learning how to use a computer until my last quarter in college (Spring 1992). I took a fiction writing class that semester and just could not endure the multiple drafts on my Brother typewriter.
6. My Brother typewriter. Man, I loved this typewriter. I wish I still had it. It was an electric typewriter, and I got it one year from my parents for Christmas. Typing was the best class I took in high school. I use it daily. I used my typewriter all the time as well. I typed every paper in college as an undergrad on that Brother typewriter, and any time I ran out of correction tape, I would cry. Thank goodness I typed well and had few errors. I even used it to type worksheets for my students my first year teaching.
7. Chalk boards--Can I just say that I don't really miss these? Whenever my fingernails would hit the board as I erased something quickly, my face and body would contort and I would begin my chicken dance. The squeal of nails on a chalkboard is worse than water boarding in my opinion. Other interesting accessories that came with the chalkboard were long pieces of wood covered with athletic socks to use as erasers. For some reason, these long erasers were preferable to the short black ones I used to clean by beating them against the telephone pole for my teacher in elementary school. I suppose in another ten years I'll be able to add dry erase boards to this part of my list, but not quite yet.
8. Small tape recorders that have the buttons at the bottom you use to play/record/fast forward/rewind/pause--I actually had three of these in my closet that I donated to the school library this year. They were great when students had to record something for an oral history project, for instance, but they were bulky and took up too much room in my supply cabinet. Now I'm writing a grant for podcast recorders. If the grant goes through, we'll be able to record small group discussions and use the recorders for collaborative or individual student projects which we can then post to the school website.
When looking back over my list, I realize that all of these changes have occurred because in some ways, educators have decided to work smarter and not harder (one of my mottoes). Instead of resisting the computer age, I joined the 21st century and am especially interested in how I can help my students use these new tools that are displacing the old methods of communicating in and out of school. Unfortunately, educators are too often Luddites who are either too scared or too set in their ways to change. Some technology tools I foresee working their ways into schools include social networking sites (Nings, Facebook, Twitter) in some form. Many schools block these sites for student safety reasons, but students are still using them at home. The resistance will be there until the Digital generation currently in schools becomes the ones running the schools. By then, we'll be focusing on applications no one has invented yet, and the arguments we now surrounding the use of technology in schools will be laughable.
posted by Jules at
8:35 AM
2 Comments:
I had that same brother typewriter. I got it soon after my computer from Radio Shack. Wow...brings back memories.
By
Mary Poppins, at 9:25 AM
Wow, I do remember all those items!! And the blue that got on your hands and face. The students wouldn't tell you; they'd just snicker. Thanks for reminding me of memories long forgotten.
By
bpd, at 10:35 PM
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