Tuesday, July 7, 2009

By George, I Think I've Got It!

How about that new header at the top of the page?

I had to get a little help from My Favorite Husband to make it all come together, since I'm not exactly Photoshop savvy yet, but I like it. And I hope you do too.

And guess what else? I finally took the time to figure out how to add captions to my amazing photos. True confession - it's not difficult. But like so many technical things, I make it much, much more complicated in my mind that it really is.

I suffer from technical anxiety. The very same anxiety that earned me a big fat F in my Instructional Materials class in college. I went to all the classes, wrote all the papers and took all the exams, but I never took the 10 minute test to demonstrate my knowledge of operating projectors or filmstrip machines or tape recorders. For real!

They let me graduate anyway, because I had way more credits than I needed and IM was an elective. And I even got my teaching certificate. Still, I always scheduled films for my students when MFH was in town, so he could come to my class to run the projector. For real!

But time marches on and even I have come to terms -- my own terms! -- with some functional bits and pieces of technology.

I can call and text on my cell phone and, in fact, I was one of the first of my friends to even have a cell phone, back when they were in bags on the floor of the car! I know, I don't look that old in my profile photo!

Sometimes I can work the phones in our house, but not always. Unless I want to order a pizza, and then I always manage to make that connection.

I can play tunes on my iTouch and iPod, but not always the ones I want to hear.

I can work my new washer and dryer that look and sound like something Rosie would use to do the laundry on the Jetsons.

I can't always work the DVD player on the TV, but I am the Queen of the remote and DVR!

There's a lot I don't know about my computer. It's a MacBook Pro and it goes fast and is always ready when I need it! Anything else and I have to call MFH, whether he's upstairs in his office and I can shout my question, or he's out of the country and I pound on one of the many phones until I get a connection and usually wake him up. You know what though, he always answers my questions and has complete and total recall of every key and procedure, even when he's asleep. Amazing! I'm not sure how he does that, but I try to remember this valuable skill when he is standing in front of the open refrigerator looking for something that is in plain sight.

So now, with my user friendly MacBook Pro, I've set up my own blog and made so many changes to my pages every day, until my dear readers never know what they'll find when they sign on here. And I've learned a little bit about taking pictures with my new camera too. I saw that smirk! I said "a little bit."

But you know, I still can't run the Flintstone's movie projector. Oh well, I guess I missed my chance! Not to worry though. I'll bet most of those "technologically advanced" instructional machines have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

So what did we learn from all this? No, I'm not taking grades on this quiz.
  1. If you live long enough, you can get past an F on your college transcript.
  2. Teachers don't know everything, just how to find the person who does.
  3. Just when you think you've mastered a new "machine" another one comes along to confound you.
  4. Learning is a lifelong pursuit.
  5. I watched too many cartoon shows as a child.

2 comments:

Janet S said...

I disagree with #5. You can never watch too many cartoons!

Maris said...

I'm pretty inept with technology - once I get used to having things one way I can be reluctant to change. But I eventually come around!