You know they've internalized the technology when ...

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It was only one column ago that I wrote about my experiences trying to teach internet basics to teachers. Though in the end I wrote quite a bit more than I'd originally expected or intended, one favorite vignette didn't find it's way into that column, and, perhaps surprisingly, fits nicely here.

In the first meeting of these classes I would ask how many of those attending came with diskettes in their pockets. The usual response to this question was "nobody told us we should bring diskettes!", to which I would reply that I wasn't scolding them for not following directions, but simply trying to get them to think digitally. After all, everyone already had their notebooks ready for jotting down whatever important information I was going to impart to them. And that being the case, why not, I asked, write down those notes in Word and save them to disk. What's more, if they came across useful URLs during the class, it would make more sense to save those to disk rather than copy them out on paper.

At the conclusion of these courses two or three of my students would tell me that they didn't have a diskette in their pockets, and then with smiles on their faces would continue to explain to me that they'd learned that it was easier and more useful to e-mail whatever they'd written and/or saved to themselves via their e-mail accounts. It was when I was told this that I knew that somebody had really learned something.

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Go to: A sign that's past its time?, or
Go to: The sagging pocket, or
Go to: How many versions of that article do you need?, or
Go to: Burning memories.