When You Rely on Technology

Ever try to teach an internet lesson to a lab full of Kindergarten students when Internet Explorer isn't working and Firefox wants to do an update? When you open Google to talk about Search Engines and instead of the recognizable-even-to-Kinders logo, they've gone and made the "Google" into Morse Code or something unreadable (a hump I thought we had gotten over since it was no longer the "Earth Day" motif). Even if you can get past that with grace, your plans will again be thwarted when you realize that after "fixing" your latest computer problems, the gurus left your lab without Adobe Flash player or Shockwave, making all the internet activities you have planned for your students unable to run with multiple error messages popping up on their screens sending them into complete turmoil and panic.

At this point, when you realize you're going to have to bag the internet activity altogether and you tell the students to go to an old standby software program, the computers will take so long to load and open the program that they will not actually have any time to draw or design, but will have to line up without creating a thing.

It was that kind of a bummer of a day.