Scientifically Thinking…

Originally posted in my first blog 5-26-06 

A recent exchange with my grandmother (via handwritten snail mail!!) strongly reminded me how differently various generations experience cultural phenomena & historic events. I shared my perceptions of the lunar landings (I wasn’t even born, but unlike many kids today, I DO know they happened…), Challenger explosion, Fall of the Berlin Wall (I was living in Germany at the time…), 9/11…  

I didn’t think to ask her about the first time she “went online.” (I think my aunt “showed her the Internet” last year.)

As a senior in high school (1989-90) at a DoDDS school in Germany, our computer science class visited a military command center that had a connection to the Pentagon. We typed, and someone there typed back! I knew about modems, but envisioned those as computer-to-computer squealing – things that back room hackers used….this was a live and instant human response from halfway around the world!!!

In college, I occasionally went MUDding — those text only “multi-user dungeons” for online role-playing. Ahead of you the tunnel forks \/ …. it’s darker to the right… Not much interaction, no “www” yet… We could use gopher to find files on mainframes at other universities, but as an undergrad I didn’t have any reason to do that, just exploring… Later in college, I TA’d for a summer high school program. The students attended a class on emerging computer technologies, and the professor mentioned exchanging mail through computers, and “talking” to someone at a different terminal. I will always remember the comment of one high school senior as we left “Why would anyone type a message on a computer? Haven’t these people heard of the telephone?”

I first remember hearing about “www” during my graduate year teaching internship. I didn’t have time to explore… ME! The kid who was all excited to get a cassette tape drive for my 10th birthday so I could store the programs I’d written on my Atari 400! The kid who’d always been ahead of the curve on all things computer-related!!! I’d decided computer stuff needed to take a back seat to my “real” career. In all my teacher-prep courses, computers had been portrayed as drill&kill teaching machines or as word processors, never as tools for connectivity.

As I began my science teaching career (1995-96), I had four Windows 3.1 computers in my classroom, connected with a Lantastic peer network — why? because a previous teacher had liked to play with computer stuff. (I never did learn how to use lantastic.) I don’t think our high school had an Internet connection that first year… At some point they got a phone connection on one library computer. If you wanted to go “on the Internet” you had to convince the librarian to enter her password, and that just wasn’t worth the interrogation.

During my early years in the classroom, teachers were required to have 5 hours of professional development in “technology” during each three-year recertification cycle. In July of 1996 (I looked it up!), I finally decided that this Web thing was something I should know about… I attended a workshop, and found a web page for my high school! I think Lycos was the search engine we used — it certainly wasn’t Google. I left the workshop thinking This is interesting, but it’s not like there’s any information online…doesn’t have much to do with the classroom.

Ha-Ha-Ha!!!!