Technology can sometimes be pretty fickle. I don't think there isn't anyone out there who has not struggled over some sort of glitch with a computer or an application. What makes it so frustrating is that sometimes, all it seems to take is just the mere presence of another person to suddenly make your computer behave the way you want it to or the application to do what you have been trying to get it to do for the past hour. Some other person just has to look over your shoulder and suddenly, "Poof" it works.
This phenomenon has happened to me a number of times. Once I was stuggling with some image in Photoshop and I could not for the life of me get it to do what I wanted it to do. My boss stopped by on one of his journies (to escape the confines on his office and see the light of day no doubt) and just about as soon he peeked his head over my shoulder, Photoshop suddenly came to life and made the image as I had wanted it to.
While this can be annoying if you are the person for whom the computer is not working, it can be most gratifying if you are the onlooker, like you have the Midas touch. Being a technology integrator, I am often in this position. A student comes to my office saying, "Mrs. ******* can't get her computer/projector/application to work. Can you come and help her?" So I go to that teacher's room. Now sometimes, I just have to step into the room and the problem ceases to exist. Sometimes, I have to just look over the teacher's shoulder and it suddenly works. Most often though, there is some reasonable explanation as to why things weren't working the way the teacher wanted it to and it ends up being a 30 second fix.
Now, when this sort of thing happens to me, I get a little frustrated and then laugh it off as one of those freak things that happens when using technology. But when this happens to some teachers, I become their hero. When all hope was lost, I swooped in and made things work. There is this one educator at CRES (JVP) to whom this happened many times. She would joke each time about how I had saved the day. She was the person who came up with the name TechnoMan. I shared this
with my family one night at the dinner table. My wife thought it was pretty funny but thought TechnoGeek would be more appropriate. But for my boys, who really didn't understand just what it was that Daddy did all day at school, it helped to simplify my job for them. Daddy sometimes helps people with their computer problems.So, now that I have explained the origin of the name, I will explain the "The Return of.." portion of the title. Here is the short version: I was the Technology Integrator for CRES for three years. I left for two years to be the Computer Teacher at Windham Middle School. I am now returning to CRES this fall to resume my job as Technology Integrator. Hence the title, "The Return of TechnoMan." Picture by: Brandon Palmer
Age 9
To say that my job will have changed from the time that I once held it would be an understatement. Two or three years ago the big buzz around educational technology was WebQuests and teachers who had a web presence at all were considered on the cutting edge. But since I have been gone there has been the widespread use of Web 2.0 tools. Some experts in educational technology feel that while K-12 education has been slow to get started with these collaborative Internet tools, they will transform teaching and learning as we know it.
I myself, while knowing what many of the Read/Write Internet tools are, have yet to use them or to apply their uses in an educational setting. So, over the next several months, I hope to learn more about them and how they can be used in the classrooms at CRES by both teachers and students.
Gone are the days when my job consisted of being a technology trainer who taught mini courses on specific applications before and after school. My job now requires that I become a one-on-one coach who aides individual teachers as they work on specific projects which utilize technology. Gone are the days when I wished teachers had to have a technology goal that they had to accomplish within the year. Now regardless of what the goal is a teacher chooses to focus on for the year, I hope that they will look at how technology can be a tool for helping them attain those goals.
In closing, I have got to go on the record about how thrilled I am to be returning back to CRES. I do feel a little bit like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" though.
"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!"
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