A little while ago, my peer Jackie Neufeld posted on her blog about some difficulty she had been having with technology. Feel free to read her post for some background information: "Mail Merge Murder"
I didn't think much of Jackie's post until last night. I am an advocate for technology and you will often hear me saying how no matter how much of a hassle technology is, if it works, it can be extremely helpful/effective. Something happened last night; however, that may have put a slight bit of pessimism in my view.
I was working along on school work, and after I had finished a couple reflections, I went to download a program to work on something else. Little did I know that when I downloaded said program, my computer would not only get spyware (which I'm sure it
gets often, despite my best efforts), but it proceeded to falter and tell me it was infected. Luckily I know how to wipe my computer and start from scratch. I can't even imagine the frustration that someone who didn't have these technical abilities would face.
So, my question is two fold. Firstly, how effective is technology? If we constantly have to have a plan B, doesn't that defeat the purpose of how convenient this technology is supposed to be? I know I got just as frustrated as my students when I was working in my internship and something would go wrong with the computers. It's hard for me to see them become discouraged to use these devices that are designed to eliminate some of these frustrations.
Also, going back again to my technical literacy posts, is this why we need to teach children technology skills, so they can trouble shoot situations like like that they can encounter every day? I'm not bragging at all, but very few of my friends/family/peers would have been able to successfully reprogram their operating system. They would have been lost!
Wow, complicated post, but I'd love to hear what you think on either of my two points :)
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1 comment:
Jenn, i have to admit i would have been completely lost or should i say i have been completely lost more than once on the computer. As a matter of fact i couldn't get into hotmail or msn last night on my room mate's computer and i was so frustrated. (but everything else worked) I tried so many different things to try figure out what was wrong but i really do think i did more damage than i did actually trying to figure out and/or solve the problem... but then when i got up this morning i tried msn and hotmail and they both worked so i have no idea what was wrong with it last night. If i had you brains in the area of technology and more specifically computers i probably would have had the problem resolved last night but i'm learning... slowly but surely. HaHa
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