As I have mentioned previously, I am currently enrolled in Technological Trends for the Music Educator, a course offered at New York University. This blog was intended to allow us to explore our personal relationship with technology and how it relates to our goals in music and education. Upon analyzing my relationship with technology, I have come to the conclusion that I was not really meant to be a "techie."
This is not to say that I am approaching the course with a defeatest attitude. In fact, I have been approaching this class with a conquering attitude. I am determined to figure out what is going on in class, even if 95% of it flies over my head. My website is relatively behind the rest of the class but I am still very proud of what I have been able to accomplish so far.
My brother, who holds a degree in Computer Science and works for a networking company, has labled me a "Technological Disaster." In reality I'm not really a disaster, but I don't believe that I have enough patience for electronics to utilize them to my full potential. When my laptop stops working I have a very strict "call Jim" kind of mentality. If my brother is unavailable, I can try for a grand total of fifteen minutes before giving up and sending him an email. With my students I have a lot of patience, when I'm stuck in bumper to bumper traffic I have a lot of patience, in my social life I have a lot of patience, but computers get the short end of the stick. It is an area of my personality I am trying desperately to work on.
So for example, I am probably the only student in my class who cannot seem to get their website on the new server successfully. The old me would give up in about a half an hour. Now, however, I have tried for a whopping three hours to figure this out. For me it is not an issue of transferring the files from the old to the new, but having it physically appear on the webpage. Maybe in class today we will discuss it more.
Back In Business!!
10 years ago
That trying for three hours to get something to work is exactly what I did as a kid to get good at the tech/electronics stuff (though often it was more like trying for 3 days & holding back the desire to scream at customer service people who sucked at their jobs)
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I did is read about technology all the time - starting with basic books at the library (I'm talking HTML for dummies & stuff like that) and reading tech message boards everyday.
The great thing about the internet is that you can post questions to these message boards and get a ton of responses/feedback and you'll learn in the process of fixing your problem.
Good for you for pushing yourself to get better at this!