Technology is wonderful...

What can I say: two months since the last post.  I have endured life without a laptop. I can truthfully report that it barely exists.  If not for the iPhone4 I got for Christmas, life would have been unbearable. And while one can websearch, email and tweet with an iPhone, blogging is really not possible. Not with two thumb typing, when I am a loquacious ten finger touch typist.


15 reasons why technology is wonderful:

1. It is wonderful when your school has an updated internet use agreement which all students must sign and return before their accounts will be activated for the new school year.
2. It is wonderful when you give it a couple of weeks and take your class to the computer room and find that a handful of them still haven't brought it back.
3. It is wonderful when you find that half your class can't remember their gmail password and have to wait for the IT department to reset it (and considering that here 'IT department' means a long-suffering colleague who is trying to teach his own classes at the same time, it is a miracle that this is sorted out as quickly as it is).
4. It is wonderful when the half of the class that have got into their gmail are able to access the blogs you have set up for them.
5. It is wonderful when large numbers of these students promptly change their blog password to something they can't remember five minutes later.
6. It is wonderful when after three hours in the computer room only a handful of students have been able to access their blog, personalise it, post something on it, and create a link to the class blog.
7. It is wonderful when you hire a laptop through the TELA (NZ teachers' laptop scheme) and you suddenly find that your lease has expired and you have to give your laptop back.
8. It is wonderful when it takes a while to get information about the options available for a replacement laptop.
9. It is wonderful when the information is stalled because suppliers are releasing new, and better models of laptop.
10. It is wonderful when you chose your laptop and order it and wait for it to arrive. 
11. It is wunderbar when, due to other priorities, it takes the IT people three weeks to profile your laptop.
12. It is truly wonderful when, in profiling your laptop somehow your normal profile on the network gets gliched so that you have no applications if you log in on any computer other than your laptop.
13. It is wonderful when you log into your google account and find that your blogs have disappeared because you set them up with your school email, which is now associated with a school google apps account...
14. It is wonderful when it takes you 3 days to figure out how to access your old blogs, which involves creating yet another (third) google account which you don't actually want.
15.  It is wonderful when you can finally get into your blog and engage in some narcissistic and cathartic blogging.

However, it truly is wonderful playing with my new MacBook Pro 13" - I have not used a Mac regularly since 1990 or so, and at all since about 1994.  If it hadn't been for the iPhone I have been playing with since Christmas, I think I would be struggling - but I think it will be worth it.  Time to go watch some more training videos.

Thanks, dear Blog, for listening to my ravings.  I feel so much better now.  My next post might even be about my teaching!!!!