I've been a studying....

It's been about a year since I started this blog. I think what's been happening is interesting....

I finally got the hang of writing and posting this blog, and then truly got the hang of being overjoyed when my former students discovered it and wrote me notes. One of them wrote, "This blog sounds just like you, Ms. Scott!" and I thought, "That note sounds just like YOU!" She was a doll, that kid. I even heard from some of my students' parents.

So what I've come to understand after writing this blog, and then pausing to take immersion lessons in digital technology, is that the digital world is fabulous and necessary, and we all have to just keep up!

I used to argue with my kids about this, saying I didn't want to spend time learning a new technology or a new language when it -- whatever "it" was -- would quickly be useless. For example, I learned how to burn a CD. Also how to work the TV remote at home, and how to properly plug the yellow/red/green plugs into the correct ones of the 16 holes in the back of the DVD player, and how to then figure out by braille how to push "eject." I learned how to use the first ever computers at the Winston-Salem Journal newsroom (which computers had black screens and orange text and a blinking cursor, and to work it, you had to basically write code). I learned how to find critical analysis by typing "Wharton AND criticism" (not, God forbid, "Wharton backslash Criticism") into the old search engines in the library; I learned how to work a Smart Board at school (sort of). You get the picture. None of this knowledge is useful any more.

I got to thinking, why bother? Also, my son stole my turntable. So then I thought: Wait a minute. Turntables are back? Ok, then. I don't have to learn anything new. I will depend entirely on others until the day arrives when everything I once knew is useful again. I can WORK my turntable, and the equalizer that went with it.

Meanwhile, I had gone to Columbia University grad school in the late 1970s. Studied the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons policy. Then the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and you can imagine then the value of my Master's degree. This was my curse! Whatever I learn becomes -- pointless! But then right around the time Nate took my turntable, Vladimir Putin of the KGB arrived to run Russia, and suddenly there was tension in the air. Little nukes going who knows where, big monster strategic nukes ready to roll. Yay!! I'm relevant again! I mean oh dear, how frightening for the world.

Of course I can't remember anything I learned in grad school. And even if I could, I'm not relevant again, because I don't know the first thing about Putin or his policies. Since the Soviet Union fell, I haven't kept up.

Which brings me right back to the issue of my not wanting to learn new digital technologies. I kept screeching at my kids, "Why should I learn what turns out to be useless?!"
They kept saying (shaking their heads) "Why don't you stop thinking that way and just keep up?!"

So they were right. And I can now work this blog, plus I have a website, plus I took crash courses this summer in digital technology, including a digital scholastic journalism workshop at Columbia taught by Melissa Wantz of Foothills Technology High School in Ventura California, whom I'd kidnap to teach at PA if I could, and whose students out there on the sunny west coast better appreciate their luck.

And thus this blog -- so long overdue -- is a celebration of the digital world!

But let me tell you, I'm crawling here.... I can work the back end of this blog and my website now, but I needed my student Ellie Blum (a lower, an angel) to help me get started. Also I don't entirely get what Google has to do with everything, or where the Drive went. Also I'm still struggling a little bit to grasp what's prose and what's a link on Twitter. Also I once could work iTunes, but it's been upgraded, so forget it. Oh and also I made a truly bad decision by upgrading my iPhone. And don't even ask me about Evernote. But I think my kids would tell me to quit revealing what an idiot I am, and to just keep learning and adapting.

So that's my update from cyberworld. Any former students out there -- you can feel free to give me a shout now. Or your parents?!?