Technology

Do you ever stop to reflect and be amazed at the ICT  that we have available to us today?  I do!  I was reminded of it again this weekend as I introduced my 86 year old Dad to the Ipod Nano, 6th generation.  I am not sure who was more stressed, him or me.  Dad because this was so new and amazing to him, me because I had bought it for him and I wasn't sure if he would love it as much as I do! Dad said his Grandmother would roll over in her grave at the thought of such a thing!

photo © 2011 Jason Bache | more info (via: Wylio)
It is so small, and there it was dangling at the end of his headphones.  No ear buds for him!  He was worried he was going to lose it, because of its size.  I thought, keep an eye on the headphones and there at the end will be the iPod.  He loves to listen to music and was amazed that we could put a whole lot of his CD's on it and still have huge space left.  I have put a few audio books on as well hoping he will get hooked into them.  We shall see.  He wakes in the night a lot and I am hoping that the iPod will be good company.  I think he is getting the hang of it, I will check in for the next few days.  I laugh at my own experience with this iPod, last year my 5th generation made awful noises and never went again.  I got the 6th generation.  For awhile I couldn't work out that I had to take the sticker of the front that showed the apps! And Dad is worried!!

I think back to the early and mid nineties when we had Apple Macs in my classroom and the one next door.  The teacher next door, Vanessa and I, attended a course in Multimedia in Education at Wellington College of Education.  Towards the end we had to present our own multimedia work.  The two of us were using Hyperstudio, I had spent hours putting my presentation together, with cords everywhere linking to the TV etc. I finally finished it.  But how were we to show it to the others?  We had no way of getting it there.  Think today of all the ways, there would be so  many easy ways.  We had to bundle up the monitor and hard drive and take the whole Mac Performa into Wellington.  Believe me it was heavy. I think too of our school intranet.  It rarely worked and I often ran down the corridor to jiggle a connection.  The internet?  Well that was very odd and I believed I'd need to be highly educated to understand how to log on to it!  How technology has moved on!

I enjoyed watching a recent TV series, Downton Abbey.  In the last episode the telephone had just arrived at the Abbey in England.  The butler was practising answering it, and he wasn't very sure of it. It was very humorous. A little like Dad and the iPod Nano.  I've told him about the iPad and I must show it to him some time.  In another twenty years I wonder what the world will be using for ICT.  Probably something not even imaged as yet.

What memories do you have of the early days?!