COETAIL Final Thoughts: Aphorisms forever…
A few random thoughts here, on completion of four courses of a “Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy” certificate program. But first a little Rant. And no visuals…
HOW is it that Murphy’s Law, or Sod’s Corollary, or whatever it is, can be counted on SO strongly, especially when the victim is on deadline? Is it just that when you’re juggling too many balls you don’t pay enough attention to each, or do things really go wrong in inverse proportion to the half-life before Crunch time (i.e. As the time before deadline shrinks in a logarithmic fashion the number of things (particularly tech-related things) that go wrong rises exponentially. (What would a graph of that would look like? Sort of like a Hockey Stick overlaid on a skateboard ramp? Al Gore, top that one ;0))
Take tonight. Last assignemnt of yet another SUNY course on using technology to ramp up learning. Just a few tweaks to the final project (a proposed Teaching Unit to be impemented next semester, then a final blog posting, and we’re done – easily before Pumpkin Time, set as the drop-dead deadline for this course, leaving exactly a week for the instructors to grade the thing before the Xmas Break. Seems like a fair deal all around.
But it’s Friday, and Friday NIght is Family Night. But no sweat. The project’s almost done. No problem taking the family to an early movie and then to dinner, get home by 8 or so, settle down to whack off the last bits, and still get to bed before the stroke of midnight.
Except for Murphy. Or Sod. Whomever. To begin with, it’s 9:15 before we abort the movie (too mature for the munchkin), find an alternate for dinner that doesn’t feature “sausage” which was all young master would for the past two week – but not today, then run the Friday Night Gauntlet of Bangkok traffic to get home.
9:15. Ha. Lots of time. Make excuses (Just for Tonight!) on Bedtime Story. Boot the computer, and get online to get this done – but hey, what’s that? Only three lights on the ADSL modem instead of four. Four years with this service and TONIGHT it decides to hiccup? Panic’’s naughty little fingers begin to knead the iron bar that’s suddenly resting across shoulders. Relax. Relax. It’s only a graduate course. Been there. Done that. Dozens of times. No Sweat.
Try the modem again, fingers drumming in an increasingly distracted tempo while the neat little row of lights flashes, flickers, and settles back at – three. No joy on the final “Internet” light. Try it one more time – just in case the first three times were flukes… Check cable connections. Test the phone for dial-tone. No problem.
Dig into the Network Connection Settings. Find an error message pointing the finger at the host computer. “Host computer does not respond”. NOT RESPOND? TONIGHT, of all nights?
Ok. Where’s the provider helpline phone number? Get some Tech help on it. Call out the troops to unearch a telephone bill, decipher the Thai instructions, locate the help number, and call the service. Hope for the best. Call the instructor to use the “dog ate my homework” excuse?
An other half hour trickes away, but then, amazingly the uncharacteristically knowledgeable, helpful and patient young man on the other end walks us through an array of helpscreens, resets, and Connect buttons, and Presto – we’re back in business. And it ’s only 10:30. Lots of time. Forget the cutesy tweaks on the Unit Plan. After all, it’s a work in progress. A quick browse through to check for gross inadequacy or error, and “Dystopian Fiction and the Futures We Make” is carved in…silicon. And except for this final blog post, that’s another notch on the old Professional Development Peacemaker.
Kind of reminds me of planning a tech-rich experience for the classroom – in the Open Area ’70’s, the “Back to Basics” 80’s, the “Wired World” 90’s, and yes, still in this “web2.0″ world of (nearly) 2010. And when all is said and done, the old aphorisms still apply…
- The more things change the more they stay the same
- What goes around comes around
- A Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
- Everythng old is New Again
- The medium is the message
Or is it really…
- The more things change, the more they leave me confused…
- What goes around is likely to smack me in the chops if I’m not paying attention
- A bird in the hand is a feathery mess
- Everything old is apt to fail just when you need it most
- The medium is the (brain) massage…
11:57 on the little server-sync’d taskmaster in the bottom corner of the screen. Lots of time to spare. Say, what’s that orange glow on the road outside?…







