My first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 from Radio Shack. I was in elementary school. It connected to the TV for a monitor and it spoke Basic. It saved data on a cassette tape. In a cassette player. I took a class at the Denver Public Library in Basic and then started writing my own little programs that did various things. One I remember in particular turned the screen black and then put the words "music" on the screen in rainbow colors and played one riff from "The Entertainer" in the background.
It took me a really long time to figure out how to get the Tandy TRS-80 to do that.
It also played games. One was "Bedlam"--all in text. It would describe a scenario (green letters on a black screen) and then ask you what you wanted to do. No images at all. Only words. Later, somehow, we had the ability to play games that were more like arcade games--I remember the game cartridges but I can't remember what kind of a device we put them into that was hooked up to the computer. There were lots of cables and cords.
This Tandy wasn't anything I could use for school work--I had an electric typewriter for that. It was SO annoying to repair typos.
At some point the family upgraded to a PC that had its own monitor so computer use didn't require negotiating with anyone about TV use. I used the PC all through high school for my papers and printed them out right there to take to school and turn it. And that's all I used the computer for--a glorified typewriter. None of the creative work I did with the TRS-80 Tandy from Radio Shack and the Basic programming language.
I used that tiny-screened Mac for most of my first two years of college, until I realized that I had a procrastination problem. Having a computer in my room allowed me to leave papers until the very last minute. If I had to live with the hours of the computer labs on campus, it would force me to work more ahead of deadlines, so I got rid of the thing.
And for the rest of college, I used the computers at CU for everything, including email. I only checked email when I ducked into a computer lab between classes to see what my friends were chattering about.
There was no technology really at all involved in my first classroom experience while student teaching. It was the first and only time I've ever kept a grade book on paper.
But at my first teaching job, there was a Mac in my classroom and a computer lab down the hall and a grade book program (Easy Grade Pro). We had maybe one projector to share across the whole staff--no one else really ever used it so I had it a lot once I discovered PowerPoint.
For a few years there, my instructional technology was basically PowerPoint and Word for the documents I created for my students. Nothing more. Until Blackboard--I needed some kind of a discussion board space for my AP Lit students (this was back in maybe 2001). Blackboard was in beta at that point and I got my classroom space for free. I used it solidly for four years (the last two I had to write to beg Blackboard to continue to grant me my classroom site for free since I was no way able to pay for it myself and my building and district weren't ready to go in that direction).
But the adventure with Blackboard was an important tech lesson for me--it was a student who put the tool in front of me, and since then, I have been comfortable following them into this crazy techie world.
Then there was grad school and my shiny new Mac Powerbook. Being able to sit anywhere and work on my computer was liberating. And then came Facebook. And cloud-based data storage (I heart Dropbox). But the way I did my work for school and teaching remained largely unchanged. Word to create documents for my students and PowerPoint to present information to them (or for them to present information to each other).
That was 2008 or so. And now (10 years later) everything is different.
Cloud based applications and basically Google have changed everything for me. I never put my hands on any of the Microsoft Office tools. I write in Google Docs. I've converted all of my materials from PowerPoint and Word to Google Presentations and Google Docs. I blog. I used a Google Site as my classroom hub and center of everything--and then I tried Schoology, and now I'm in love with Google Classroom. All my lesson plans, all my course materials, everything right there, and public for students to access. I teach off of Google Classroom every single day AND it helps me keep all of my students' work organized. I do not keep a paper plan book anymore. My students rarely hand me anything on paper (though they do indeed keep paper writer's notebooks). It's all in the cloud--turned in, responded to, and returned to my students. I'm far more efficient and organized.
But more important than that--getting my students' hands on the tools allows them to collaborate and think and question and explore like never before. My classroom is a more connected and vibrant space because of these tools. My mantra has always been to not use technology unless it allows me to do something important I cannot do without it. There are times that the white board and a marker are exactly what I need.
But most of the time, working in a digital space is critically important for my students' literacy. After all, what might the world look like in another six years? What tools might we all need to know how to use? What skills might we need? If my classroom and my teaching didn't change and evolve along with technology and in another six years it looked pretty much the same as it did six years ago then my students would be even farther behind.
