Sunday, January 30, 2011

Forty four years later

Some of your blogs have reminded me of my feelings the first time I took a computer class in the spring of '67. I was, and probably still am very introvert, and I knew no one in this class of about 200. The room where we punched the holes in the cards was small with very little equipment and the waiting line was always long. Many of these classmates, almost exclusively boys, were really hyped about computers and I was there to satisfy a small curiosity. I received, a low grade for this one-credit undergraduate class while I was a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Wyoming. The computer was a Philco 2000 and sat in a room behind a small window where a student would accept my stack of punched cards and a day later hand me a printout that typically demonstrated that I had a lot to learn yet. I was deadly afraid that I'd never understand computers.

There is one really great plus to being old; you can look back and see how things can turn out very differently than what one expects. In forty-four years you too will look back at some of your fears and concerns and realize how small they then seem. I suspect in 44 years, at the age of 110, I will reflect on some major changes of the years. Meanwhile, I will dwell on the simple things of blogging in education, and "how do I program iPads?"

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