All my life I've enjoyed experimenting with the parts of a computer. Tweak them, see how they operate, troubleshoot for improved performance, build systems, etc. Perhaps it's in my DNA from my father tweaking car engines when I was a kid in our family backyard in Brooklyn, NY in 1970's and 80's. We didn't have much money growing up and so it followed that we didn't have the nicest cars either. Duct tape on bumpers comes to mind.
In college I studied Music Engineering at NYU from 1988-1992. It was there I encountered again the importance of troubleshooting since the equipment (Analog tape machines, synths, microphones,...)was prone to break down often or vanish mysteriously. We still had recording projects to complete, however.
After graduating, I went to work in January of 1993 for a Real Estate Law firm, specializing in Tax protests. Virtually the polare opposite of an exciting environment compared to a music studio. It was an exciting time however, for the PC, the Internet and it's impact on the workplace. Our office decided to roll out an NT network and get a few PCs (Pentium Pro machines I think) for the partners. The office had in it's employment 1 IT person (IBM programmer), who was not as interested in the prospects of the new technologies impacts as I was. He was more interested in building up his avatar in World of Witchcraft. So I dove in, took some classes in tech support, network administration, and PC maintenance to create a niche for myself in the office. In the interest of disclosure, it was all paid for by the firm. (People believe you more when you say that in a blog)
Soon I found myself as a full fledged tech person. I had computer guts all over my cubicle. I had other office responsibilities, but the lure for me was in experimenting with all I had available to me. I would go in on weekends (not paid) to maintain PCs, play with utility software, etc. I would get calls at home from the managing partner asking me to help fix their daughters computer in their gorgeous Park Avenue apartment in the middle of the night ( I lived in Brooklyn). I was teaching people in the office how to use Excel and Microsoft Office. Much more exciting than my other responsibilities, but essentially I had created a new position and importance in the office and everyone would come to me. I even started a side business doing party and wedding invitations.
In the fall of 2007, after parting ways with the firm I found myself looking for a job. I was brilliantly unsuccessful at finding a position in the tech field. One day I got a call about a computer teacher position with an all girls high school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Having no teacher experience to speak of but nothing to lose, I took the interview and somehow, I got the job, but I had no idea what I was in for.
First, the school was a bit behind technologically in every way. Aside from kids throwing themselves on the floor, taking pictures of each other during class time and not listening to a word I said, I was not the disciplinarian type yet, I had a lot on my hands. This job also required you to be tech support for the whole school! The previous computer teacher was teaching typing and using the Internet for research, Microsoft Word skills. Not a very aggressive curriculum. Especially since the freshmen were typing faster than I could. The machines in the school were P3, 125K memory, 9GB hard drives running W2k OS that they purchased in the year 2000. I decided to start interviewing students to get an idea of what their computers at home were like and what their previous schooling experience with computers was. Ingratiate myself perhaps, but more important to me was to learn where they were coming from. The biggest complaint from students was that the computers are too slow. Slower than their computers at home and, it appeared to me because of this, they had little interest using the computers in the school(The teachers had even less interest). I also happened to notice in the lab, like most labs perhaps, computer parts were all over the place. There were enough RAM sticks for every computer in the school and then some. And that's when it hit me. Let's open these computers up and see what's going on inside. Let's learn how to make a computer faster without a whole lot of money, or just simply buying new ones. So we began to open the computers up and identify the essential parts of the PC. How to dust them out, clean them for efficiency. I began to envision a real lab experience involving the students in the process to learn how these systems work.
I must say the girls were fascinated. They had no idea what a computer looked like on the inside! And so the beginnings of the first unit of my curriculum were born and grew from there. I now have the girls designing their own systems using online resources.
So with the processing power of today's desktops, laptops, and the emergence of netbooks, have we finally reached the tipping point of hardware funding? With the advent of cloud computing and all we do with social networking and mindtools, do we really need so much more money and power or just a smarter maintenance plan. I know it is a lot more work, but think about the benefits.
I think the moral of this story is, as Martha Wiske says in Teaching for Understanding with Techonolgy, "Teachers are best able to guide inquiry around topics that they themselves find fascinating ". The other point that I like that she makes, and I stress to each of my classes, is the importance of making mistakes. As she says, "Making mistakes is a sign of willingness to risk learning and growing, not evidence of failure. Cultivating these kinds of beliefs in one's students is essential...".
I wouldn't trade any of the "mistakes" I've made to be anywhere than exactly where I am right now.
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