Why aren't we learning chat?
One woman in one of my courses spent almost the entire course visiting Israeli singles sites, apparently trying to find the Mr. Right for her. If I was teaching how to bookmark, she was logging into a site she'd heard about. If I was explaining the difference between a search engine and an index, she was looking at photographs of the available men. After giving an in-class assignment I would go around the room and help out whoever was encountering difficulties, and she would call me over to look on her screen: "Look at him! Does he look like he's only 42? Who does he think he's kidding!". My attempts to explain to her that my internet skills didn't include being a judge of men's ages didn't help.
But it's not fair to write that she was only interested in visiting these sites. She also wanted to use their chat facilities, and she was convinced that this was the most important thing that I could be teaching the class. No matter what the topic I was trying to teach, she would always let me know that I wasn't fulfilling my duties as a teacher because I wasn't explaining to her (or to the others in the class who, it turned out, weren't at all interested in using chat) this essential and, judging from her desire to be taught, apparently difficult internet skill.
Go to: We're getting a bit complicated there, aren't we?, or,
Go to: You mean you teach this stuff?