Leaping Forward

When I started teaching fifteen years ago, having just been a textbook editor who got manuscripts via email and a not-for-profit program director who relied on email for communication, I asked in my interview if [we] were using email. The principal looked at me like I had three heads. I'm not sure she even knew what email was. Mimeograph machines had been replaced by photocopiers (barely) but that was the extent of technology. I would go home at night and use my second hand computer to write and print curriculum materials and I would photocopy them the next day. If ever I had to fly by the seat of my pants, I am loathe to admit I had to photocopy handwritten materials. That's how behind the times my school was with technology. 

While we all have computers and school email now, and some of us even have Smartboards (despite being near the bottom of the barrel in per pupil spending) and are up-to-date in the classroom, I'm by no means a technology maven at home. Long gone are the days I was ahead of the technology curve.

No DVR, no TiVo, no flat screen TV. In fact, my TV goes back about two feet deep behind the screen and weighs about a metric ton. I was one of the last hold outs to get a cell phone. (My parents don't count. In fact, my mom still doesn't have one.) I put up an equally stubborn fight against texting, which meant it took a while before I got myself a phone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

Needless to say, I don't have an iPhone. I've never had an iPod. Of any sort. But this weekend I took a giant leap and got an iPad.

Yeah, I did.

How do ya like me now?