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"But The Computers are Taken!"
Featured Author:
Kate Olson
Kate Olson is a non-traditional new teacher, coming to the classroom after spending time as an accountant and a stay-at-home mother. She currently teaches Business Education in La Crosse, WI and is an online course developer and facilitator for teacher professional development at Professional Learning Board.
Her current educational passion is integrating new technologies into the classroom and enjoys sharing the exciting new tools she finds with her colleagues at school and in her online personal learning network. When she’s not glued to her laptop doing geeky things like wearing a headset and recording audio for her keyboarding blog, she can be found chasing a baby and toddler around the house, running, scrapbooking, and drinking gallons of coffee.
She blogs about her experiences in teaching and technology at Kate Says and blogs with her students at Keying In and Global Bloggers.
More articles from this author:
“But the computers are taken!” As a teacher, I’m sure we’ve all heard this quote. Here’s what our very own featured writer, Kate Olson, found while waiting for the computers to become available:
I had the pleasure this morning of getting to sit in the school library and read with 2 classes of students. Our LMC director organized reading time for all language arts classes for a celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday and I happened to have some free time so I could join in. I grabbed a book off the shelf and while reading, found this quote:
“As she stumbles away, she catches sight of the laptop on the entryway table. She doesn’t dare pick it up. There are people on the computer. Talking, talking, talking! “Is there on place I can go in this entire universe where people aren’t discussing how weird I am?” she asks the mirror?”
The book is “Agnes Parker…Keeping Cool in Middle School” by Kathleen O’Dell and is a typical teenage girl novel, dealing with friends, not fitting in, and the usual middle school stuff. The part I find interesting (from a research/educator standpoint) is the main character’s attitude toward the online social aspect of teen life. The background from the above quote is that one of Agnes’ friends called her and told her she was IM’ing with a bunch of girls from school and someone started making fun of Agnes. She encouraged Agnes to quick login to IM to defend herself.
I find being a middle school teacher really interesting because I remember the social awkwardness of middle school all too well. It’s amazing how the memories don’t fade very much after 15 years! It was hard enough then – I can’t imagine how much harder it must be with another level of social life (online) to deal with. I don’t look forward to my own daughter’s middle school dramas and hope she has an easier time than I did – right now we just passed the potty training milestone, so luckily I have a few years to get ready!
This book is just one of many that deal with the issue of middle school and teen social/online issues, but I think that reading books like this give me one more point of reference when trying to understand my students and in the future, my own children.
