Changing Times

Reading Erica Bohrer's facebook post today about being older than the internet made me laugh! In fact, I found this shirt with the same theme recently.

 
 This year, I've been smacked in the face with the reality of my age 3 different times.

 We have a cart full of laptops that we can check out to use with our students. I've been doing that once a week. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I would have to teach my students how to use a mouse and that they would also almost snap the "top" off the laptop because they kept pushing on the screen (thinking it was a touch screen).

 The second time was just last week when I was asking the children if they had any connections to a story we were reading. I've been talking about connections since school started in September. I asked one little girl to share her text to self connection and a little boy raised his hand and said, "Mrs. Gillow, when do we get to use your phone?" I politely responded, "Ummmm...never."  That's when he announced that if we were ever going to "text" anyone, we would have to use my phone (because none of the kids have a phone). Honestly, I've already done several lessons about text to text and text to self connections. I even did a whole lesson on the "text" in books at the beginning of the year.

 The third "hey, you are old" moment was when the majority of my students had no idea what a chalkboard was when it was mentioned in a book. We have white boards, interactive whiteboards, document cameras and LCD projectors in our classrooms. Only a few of  my students knew what a chalkboard was and I explained it to the rest. I told them about how I used to be in charge of cleaning the erasers and the chalkboard in elementary school. They thought it was quite funny that I went home sneezing every day from the cloud of chalk that would puff out of the erasers as I banged them together each afternoon. Just amazing how times have changed.

I recently wrote a grant to get two mini iPads for my classroom. We are having so much fun exploring different ways to use the technology in my classroom. I don't think I'm ready to tell them that I'm older than the internet. My birthday is next week. When they ask me how old I am, maybe that will be my response. "I'm older than the internet!"