Basic at the Denver Public Library to Teaching in the Cloud: My Digital Autobiography

This post was originally posted in April of 2014--this version is slightly revised. 

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.

Around the same time, my brother used some money he had saved up to get a very early Macintosh computer. It had no hard drive. But with the extra external disk drive, you could do less swapping of floppies (the software lived on the floppies and you had to insert them and switch them incessantly to get all the software up and running before you could actually do anything with the computer). The computer became mine when I went to college, and I had it in my dorm room. I think we upgraded it to an external hard drive, so there was no longer all the floppy disc silliness.

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.

Doc Z's graduation speech--based on my independent reading for this semester

On February 8 of this year, just as I was finishing up a yoga class, my husband burst into the studio with three words, “Sarah. Your dad.” Thus began a furious drive to the emergency room at a hospital in Westminster, where I arrived a half hour after he was gone, greeted by my mom and brother, and the three of us “clung to each other, crying for dad, the man we loved” as Helen Macdonald described a similar scene in her book H is for Hawk, a memoir about the sudden loss of her own father.

Since that evening, grief has been my new constant companion. It has affected my cognitive ability, as Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking. There have been days where thinking anything of substance has been impossible. It has left me swimming in memories in photographs--my own version of Didion’s “vortex effect.” I spent the first few weeks after his death going through literally every single photo of my father that I could find and wove them--all 1000 of them--into a photo slide show for family and friends. In this way, I think I was doing what Elizabeth Alexander described as her purpose for writing about her husband in The Light of the World: “And so I write to fix him in place, to pass time in his company, to make sure I remember, even though I know I will never forget.” Looking at the photos kept Dad close, made memories salient, allowed me to hold on to him though he was just so suddenly gone.

I sought to make sense of the hole. In my world, my dad had always been terra firma as Elizabeth Alexander describes the role parents play-- "terra firma, to stand, to be planted in the earth” like a 100-year-old oak tree that stands through storms that knock down most other trees. Though Dad’s presence had changed in recent years due to his Parkinson's-related condition, the fact that he was there was resolute. Though a lot of things in my life have shifted in my nearly 43 years, the existence of my father was constant, assured, reliable. I am Sarah and my father is Ted Zerwin. This was a truth never to be questioned. Terra firma.

Until it wasn't anymore.

The loss was “obliterative,” as Didion describes, “dislocating to both body and mind.” She explains that “grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” And that has been true for me. Following the shock of the loss, and long after the funeral is over, Didion describes an “unending absence that follows, a void.” That’s where I am right now, trying to understand it, trying to wrap my head around what it means that my father is gone. How do I move forward carrying such loss?

Macdonald explains what she learned in the wake of her father’s death: “You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps.” Yes--holes, absences, losses. These are part of human life. We love and then there is loss. How do we grow around and between the gaps? Love. More of it. Kindness. Patience with ourselves and others. Gratitude. For Macdonald, this lesson came in training Mabel, the hawk she adopted following her father’s death. Only through love, patience, kindness, and gratitude was she able to forge an authentic connection with the hawk. This helped her to grow around and between the gaps of her loss.

Alexander said of her husband’s death: “I could not have kept [his] death from happening, and from happening to us. It happened; it is part of who we are; it is our beauty and our terror. We must be gleaners from what life has set before us.” We love and then there is loss. And what I glean from my loss are the lessons my father taught me: love boldly, give unsparingly, seek to make a difference in the lives of others. And though the grief will never leave, people tell me it will get easier to carry.

Short Story Awesomeness

Your short stories are seriously awesome. I'm glad now I'm not the only one who gets to read them...

They tell me I am happy (Dakota S, 3rd)

With a sooty rag he scrubbed away at the filmy glass, and sneezed a few times in the process. (Alex W, 6th) 

“Finding where you belong in this world is one of the most difficult things we face as humans.” It’s written on the wall above my head, I don’t know who wrote it but it’s been there longer than I have. I always thought it was written by one of the Firsts. (Ethan K, 6th)

He had now been walking the basement for hours. (Jack B, 3rd)

A sigh escapes her. A breath of fog appears on the window, clouding the morning. With trembling fingers, she removes the key from the ignition. A beat, a pause, and she sits, her fingers clenched around the solidity. (Annabel N, 1st)

I looked out my window to see my grandma sitting in the back of a red convertible with hot red flames painted across the sides. (Ben G, 1st)

It was November of 2006. She woke up to the bright glimmers of the snow slowly seeping through her window. Friday, she thought to herself. It’s Friday. Something was tugging at her. She couldn’t put her finger on it. (Molly S., 3rd)

Once upon a time there was a girl named Victoria. Wait, let me start over. The beginning is used in fairy tales and this isn't close to one. (Karina R, 6th)

The kiddos loved drawing so damn much that they started anunderground Draw Club.
1st rule of Draw Club, Don’t talk about Draw Club
2nd rule of Draw Club, (You get the joke) (Dan W, 6th)

It’s high noon in a small, generic western town.  (Robert C, 3rd)

He winked at me as I boarded the train and passed through the men’s section to the back of the bus where my wife was waiting for me. (Hannah K, 3rd)

Today, I found a cave. Not just any cave. This one is darker than anything I have seen in my life. (Keenan D, 6th)

Liz had been alone for ten months now. (Jordan R, 1st)

All the readings seemed normal, I thought as I recorded my findings into the database. My cat, Meep, meowed next to my feet, begging for food. (Ginger B, 1st)

New York pulsed in the morning, sirens its pacemaker, its arteries more congested than Paula Deen’s. (Daniel I, 6th)

Anybody would have pinned him as just a tourist walking down the streets of Spain. (Robert W, 3rd)

As the day begins, Mike awakes from all his sneaker boxes collapsing and his alarm clock going off continuously. (Francisco A, 6th)

They left me. 
The mothership took off with my brothers and sisters and they just left me behind. (Josh B, 3rd)

You open your eyes, a bright stark white rapidly engulfed by pitch black nothingness.  (Rodrigo G, 1st)

About two decades ago the Kingdom found its new bounty and it came in the form of a new dimension through a door in the ruins of the city of Obscurity.   (Gaurav B, 1st)

There was no light in her eyes. She stared pointedly at the table. Even her tears were long gone. (Haley Rae, 1st)

On one half of the world the day was perfectly fine; on the other the night was one of the most peaceful one could hope for.  (Will B, 6th)

Blog Carnival #2: My First Car

This is my first car, a 1982 Oldsmobile Firenza that I named "Burner." 

Don't laugh. 

It was as stick shift so I felt like a race car driver. 

It had a little orange light on the dash that would light up and say "shift" when it was time to shift to the next gear. I hated that light. I covered it with an "Abolish Apartheid" sticker so that instead of telling me to shift all the time, my car would light up to make a political statement instead. (South Africa officially abolished apartheid in 1991, btw--I'm sure it was all because of my car). 

And even though I never would have chosen the color, or the family four-door styling, I loved this car. It was my freedom. 

My wheels. 

It's decorated here for homecoming of my senior year at Northglenn High School (not sure why I wrote "NGHS" on my car when Northglenn is clearly one word, so NHS?). 

This is the car that terrified me until I figured out the clutch. All it took was my brother John taking me for one driving lesson after my mom had tried to explain to me how the clutch worked. Her explanation did not work. John's did. 

This is the car that used to take me on afternoon adventures where I would point at the mountains and just drive west from Westminster until I hit them (ended up in Eldorado Canyon one day doing that). 

This is the car that went on Slurpee runs and through the drive through at Taco Bell umpteen times for taco salads and bean burritos. 

This is the car that used to drive too fast through the abandoned drive-in movie theater, catching air on the little hills that you would park your car on so your seats would be appropriately reclined for viewing the screen (don't tell my parents I did that, k?). 

This is the car I got my one and only speeding ticket in. The car I wrecked (totaled actually, but we fixed it anyhow--see you can't even tell in this picture, can you?). (Okay, so maybe 16 was my worst year of driving--totally safe since then). 

This is the car that Jeremy borrowed on homecoming afternoon so he could pick me up to take me to dinner and to the dance (after he spread rumors that I said I didn't want to go to homecoming with him anymore because he didn't have a car himself) (I DID NOT say that). 

This is the car that lost its muffler when I went over train tracks too fast trying to find Paris on the Platte (again, the year of 16). 

This is the car I sat in after my junior year spring band concert where I found out I had been selected as drum major for senior year--I turned on the radio and "I wish It Would Rain" by Phil Collins came on, and I knew it was a sign from the universe that my senior band season was going to rock (we had taken state sophomore year in the rain, so the rain had kind of become this thing for us). (see the photo below for evidence of how we did indeed rock our senior season)

This is the car the trumpet section blocked in totally--like completely surrounded with cars on all sides--after marching band practice one day while the color guard captain and I were talking with the band director. They blocked in her car too, and none of the perpetrators were anywhere to be seen to move their cars. We were stuck. So we pushed Paul Teddy's Jeep onto the baseball field and I think somehow locked it behind a gate? How did we do that?

This is the car that I drove in with the windows down and the music blasting on summer nights--cool night air my companion as I drove home by curfew. 

This is the car that stalled out on me at the Quebec street exit off of 270 one frigid below zero December night. The heat wasn't working either, and I had just driven from Boulder, and I was dressed for the ballet that I was going to with Becca (no boots, no warm socks...). I thought I was going to freeze there on the shoulder of the exit ramp, but somehow I got it to start again and limp along for another couple of miles, which was far enough to get me where I was going. 

This is the car that took me to college. 

This is the car I sadly had to say goodbye to in 1994, replaced by a white Ford Escort named "Snoopy." What an annoying car--but I won't complain. My parents handed me the title when I graduated from college. It never once broke down on me (not even when the tires were horribly worn and Snoopy was loaded down with all my worldly possessions as I moved from Missoula to Seattle in 1996--not sure how the tires didn't explode on me on that drive). 

I miss that car. 

color guard captains Keri and Beth, drum major me, drum captain Eric, holding our state championship swag

doing my drum major thing

The Cats (a poem by Jane)

The cats are cute,
Sure.
They may purr now,
But before you know it,
The back of your head will be shredded to bits by these terrors.
Sure,
They’re sleeping now.
Get ready for the night.
They prowl and yowl,
Waiting for you to throw that disgusting pom-pom for them.
Yes,
They’re snuggling now.
But when they are all alone,
One forces the other one into a corner and they fight.
I see that they are out of the kitchen now.
Soon your butter dish will be knocked down and licked clean.
These are the actions of the wretched cats,
That prowl in my house day and night,
Looking for prey to hunt down and annoy.

So it Goes; let's be kind to one another: Blog Carnival #1 (6th)

Dear Sam, Stefan, Michelle, and Karina,

Sam and Stefan, you both wrote about So it Goes. For Stefan it captures how he has dealt with a personal loss. And Stefan, your story helps to illustrate why it's so important to treasure our time and make the most of it, as Sam has now figured out.

Michelle and Karina--you both wrote about dogs. Michelle volunteers every weekend to help take care of the dogs at the Humane Society. And Karina's story about how she lost her dog, Princess, is heartbreaking.

All of these posts remind us that we need more kindness in our world, as you say, Michelle.

Thank you, all four of you, for your stories and for making meaningful connections to Slaughterhouse Five. You've provided some thoughtful things for us to think about today in this first Blog Carnival.

Most sincerely,

Doc Z

Along The Road, good guys/bad guys, love, fear, happiness, and sharing your leftovers: Blog Carnival #1 (1st Hour)

The Road is getting you all to some very interesting thinking about your research.

Let me explain. Sophie wonders, is it easier to be a good guy or a bad guy? For Tatiana, fear and love work together--and fear of losing someone she loves crippled her once. Read her post for the story. Izzy G writes of her grandfather, and the powerful example he was to her of unconditional love. Ginger's post will make you wonder about what you would do if a homeless person asked you for your Cheesecake Factory leftovers. Would you share? If not, why not? Niraj makes the point that sometimes the best option is NOT going out with your friends. He chooses to stay in some times, but he doesn't worry about missing out. He has good reasons. Happiness might be the ultimate thing that drives us, according to Izze B. Kyle's post reveals the lengths he goes to for love. Would you give up your morals because of fear? Read Tony's post to ponder that. Sienna is trying to figure out what it's all about--life, that is. I bet some of you are on a similar path. Emma ponders fear of strangers.

What does this all of to do with The Road? A lot. I guess you'll have to read to see how. Don't forget to leave comments to respond--share your own stories, ask questions, explain where you connect with your classmates' ideas. Have fun at your first blog carnival!