If it was easy, everyone would be doing it…
Over the years I have worked with spirit duplicators and Gestetner stencils. Used a dictaphone to do transcriptions. Typed on a manual typewriter and an electric one. The height of technology was the Selectric typewriter where you could change the font ball.
Computers came along and I figured out how to use WordStar and eventually to compose on a desktop, which required a whole nuther part of my brain. Now I can’t imagine how I used to write magazine articles, generate weaving drafts, class handouts etc., without a desktop.
I even got pretty good with Power Point and Word. But the one thing I did not learn was Excel.
And now I have to.
As a weaving teacher my technology choices have changed over the years and I continued to learn how to make those programs work – as best I could. But becoming technology proficient wasn’t the end goal – it was just another tool and I learned enough to make each one do what I needed it to do.
But now? Now I have to finally learn Excel. And I’m not happy about that. I’m a weaver, not a geek, Jim!
After pouting about that for a while last night, I got up this morning to discover that it wasn’t a bad dream – no, no, I do still have to tackle Excel.
Sigh.
When I set out on this journey, I had a pretty decent idea of what needed to be done. I was already conversant with cut and paste options and pretty confident that I could get the information into a format for students to use effectively.
But as computers become more common, the production values went up and the expectation of the students to have quality handouts in their hands raised accordingly.
With Zoom meetings, those expectations seem to just keep going up. Now weaving instructors are expected to have video with high production values as well as graphic artist level slides in their presentations.
And I’m tired. I’m supposed to be retired (for certain values of), not learning new technology. (OK, old technology, but new-to-me.)
However, I have done the prep work. I have the information in a format that *I* can process. How hard can it be to enter that into a spreadsheet?
I guess I’ll find out this morning…