The class: Technology
The grade: Sixth
The kids: High-achieving honors students

Just imagine the things you could do with this class!

If I were teaching it, they’d get to:

• Build their own website
• Learn to blog
• Create an online calendar to track homework and schedules
• Learn digital imaging
• Explore and research a chosen topic
• Find their way around computer hardware and software and begin to learn key terms for evaluating products

The possibilities are endless.

They could:

• Create their own online newspaper, each covering topics of individual interest.
• Build a community and learn how to be good citizens online.
• Be excited about the possibilities the Internet holds for each individual, beyond the obvious allure of MySpace.
• Have a mock political campaign and election, complete with photo/audio/video, bloggers, and ‘traditional media’.
• Create a podcast

Wanna know what the first assignment was?

And people wonder why our kids lag? So my girl who has had her own laptop for a year and a half and can put together kick-butt presentations in no time at all, who has her own Flickr account and Blogger blog gets to write an essay on the history of computers — an essay that will be obsolete by the time she’s finished, because as she observed, “By the time something is in the stores something better has already been made.”

This is so frickin’ frustrating.

Technorati Tags: education, middle school, technology

Update: Dancergirl has some pretty strong feelings about it, too.

It’s Saturday morning, which means that morning pug-walking duties belong to me, which also means that I will not be sneaking back to bed — I’m too awake now. Sticks and T are snoring upstairs, and Dancergirl is laid low with a nasty viral bronchitis. Clouds are gathering, the birds are hunkered down and another storm is looming on the horizon.

Randomly clicking through feeds this morning, Molly Holzschlag’s post about inventorying her life and fighting bitterness jumped out at me.

Some Background

I think Molly is amazing. I don’t know her, haven’t met her, but hope to meet her at some point in the future. However, when I decided to really LEARN the principles behind CSS and HTML last year I bought every single one of her books I could find, because all of the other books I read referred back to her books. Even though my career is in an entirely unrelated field to web design, I do enough volunteer sites that I wanted a clear understanding of how to get under the hood and tweak them so that they looked professional even if an amateur was the one designing and maintaining them. Also, the website I work for as the second job was redesigning their site to bring it up to web standards.

Molly’s books have the best spot on the bookshelf and are the most dog-eared, because I actually use them all the time.

But that’s not the only reason I think Molly is amazing. She’s passionate, smart, one of the highest-profile women in the field of web standards and design, yet amazingly human and transparent. Someone who isn’t afraid to put their whole heart out there despite being (at least among the web glitterati) a public figure. Someone who takes the time to comment on a total stranger’s blog and give encouragement.

If you had to pin me down and force me to name only two women that I truly admire for who they are as well as what they do, it would be Nancy White and Molly Holzschlag. There are others, but these are the ones I call leaders.

There are others, but you would not find their names familiar, nor would you name them as being in the forefront of the ‘web leaders’. Unfortunately.

What follows is a reply to her - it’s long and diverse. These are thoughts that I’ve meant to blog on for awhile and Molly’s post just brought it all together. While the replies are directed toward her specific post, they’re also my own thoughts on these topics that have been rolling around for the past month or so and would have found their way into a post here sooner or later. Forgive the length — I hope it’s worth reading, at least.

On Leadership, Accolades and Achievement

…one feeling remains with me, and that’s the nagging sense that my contributions to the success of the Web design and development field, the people in it, and the progress of the Web itself are in fact under if downright unacknowledged, accolades or not.

Molly, I agree with you on that. Many, many women have contributed to the success of the web, web companies, web growth, web standards, web communities, yet if you read the Technorati 100 or subscribe to Memeorandum (which I just recently dropped from my feeds), you’d think the world and particularly the Internet was run by men, for men and about men.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. From my perspective, women are the driving force of online community with one notable exception, which is, of course, the tech area where the men dominate. Lately the men don’t seem to be doing a terrific job at it, either. I dumped a ton of subscriptions this week because I was tired of reading and re-reading the squabbles between Dave Winer and various others, including the whines flying around between ‘the top geeks’ over Mike Arrington’s lunch with Bill Gates. Good grief. Go duke it out in a bar somewhere, boys, it’s unbecoming and certainly not inviting.

Yet, women do have a voice that’s growing — Blogher is witness to that.

Are you underacknowledged? Yes. But don’t let that take away from what you’ve done and have left to do. There are people out there who would have no access to the web if it weren’t for the standards, methods and procedures that give them access despite handicaps and disabilities - standards you helped develop and more importantly, educate others about.

Architects are often overlooked in favor of the occupants of the house. This is true for you, too, but the house stands long after the occupants leave it.

I want to better understand why it took me 32 books before one ever got the broad attention that Zen of CSS Design has gotten. Were they lesser books? …That the influence of my writing has relevance isn’t the question, rather, why I had to work much, much harder at gaining that place in the sun than anyone.

Are these failings part of a personality or behavioral defect on my part? Did I just do things the wrong way? Is it because I’m a woman? Older? Unmarried and therefore status irrelevant? You tell me, because the things I come up with are pretty much all the ingredients of an unpleasantly tart mix.

Here’s an answer from a consumer: The Zen of CSS Design had the visual appeal and challenge for the readers to take the lessons learned, apply them, and receive recognition for them. Your other books are the tools in the toolbox that brings us to the Zen conclusion. Honestly, I bought Zen first and then the others. Does that devalue the others? Just the opposite — it makes them that much more valuable.

Here’s something else: You are a forward-thinker. You’re light-years ahead of the general populace on this stuff. By the time they (we) got a clue, you were already on to the next challenge.

As to the keynote thing, I don’t know. I still have your keynote on my iPod because I thought it was great and keep it for days when I need some inspiration. Other keynotes I’ve listened to since have been long deleted.

The Money Thing

Which leads me to your next bitter pill — the money thing. (There must be something in the air this week — Denise had a money post this week, too).

I bought into the ideologies of my generation and thought that giving for the sake of giving should be reward enough of its own. If that’s true, and I’m feeling this way, does that make me a bad and selfish human?

We’re in the same generation, you and I. Don’t confuse a desire to be out from under financial pressure with selfishness. It’s not selfish to want a comfortable future, financial rewards for hard work or a debt-free life.

I struggle all the time with this question, because I do way too much for free or for much less than it’s worth. Is this because I’m unselfish or because I am not confident enough in my vision of my worth? If I don’t believe I’m worth more, why should others?

Colors of Grass, and Grief

This is a sorrow of huge proportions and despite my best problem-solving abilities, do not know how to heal the wounds and fill the empty womb of sorrow I carry with me every day.

I’m so sorry you’re grieving this. Lean on your friends a little, let them help. My friend Swamphag had dreams of a life and a knight, too — dreams that got shattered last year when he died suddenly. Read her blog — she’s working through it and maybe something there will help you.

Gender has nothing to do with it

The fact remains that I feel what I feel, and I’m asking for your insight as to what I can do to rise above this sense of utter failure at being human, this despair born of loss, this sense that had I been a man, or smarter, or more innovative, or thinner and prettier, or fill in the blank, that I wouldn’t be sitting at the edge of a precipice looking down at the sea of bitterness ready to slip off that edge and end up an old, unhappy woman who looks back at her life and berates herself and everyone around her for it not going her way.

Okay, time for a deep breath. I don’t buy this “if I were a man things would be different” stuff. We are who we are. We are products of our generation, our attitudes, our resolve. I don’t think thin, pretty, or female has anything to do with it. At the end of the day, we make our own choices and I can name at least five that haven’t been good for me that were in my control. I can think of another five that have been really good for me. I can think of five more things I want to do in this lifetime to make the world better and give me some satisfaction. None will bring me recognition, accolades, or money. They will, however, give me a sense of personal satisfaction.

This isn’t a gender thing. This is purely about where you are, where you want to be, and what purpose you see for your life.

All of us, male and female, have our own set of roadblocks, blinders and gifts. I believe it’s up to us to take all of those and consider what we view to be our purpose.

A hundred years from now the history books will not record the fact that DrumsNWhistles lived a relatively obscure life in a small town on the central coast of California, had three kids who had their own list of achievements, had a hand in building two separate and large Internet communities, and made websites for churches, dance schools, band boosters and her family. There will be no books listed in the Library of Congress with my name on them.

Nevertheless, I derive a great deal of satisfaction in those accomplishments and wouldn’t trade them for the listing in the Library of Congress.

A hundred years from now, books about the history and development of the Internet will point to the contributions of Molly. Those books won’t list those contributions as one that “a woman” made. They’ll just credit the foundation-builders of the Internet for what it was in the early 21st century. There will be more than 20 book listings in the library of Congress with Molly’s name on them. There will be early recordings of keynote speeches that Molly gave.

Isn’t it time to derive some satisfaction in those accomplishments today, Molly?

If You’ve Gotten This Far…

What do you want to be in 100 years?

Technorati Tags: gender differences, depression, life questions

I’m not sure why this is, but Gmail is crashing Firefox 1 out of every 2 times it loads! If anyone has an idea why, please, please post a comment before I strangle someone!!!

Grrrrrr.

Technorati Tags: gmail, firefox, browser crashes

This pretty, pretty machine was rolled out today.

Dual processors; dual boot…wouldn’t it be cool to have a laptop that would run XP and MacOS? I need to figure out a way to justify getting it — and paying for it.

Technorati Tags: mac, laptop, intel, macworld

To me, buying a computer is similar to what long-term commuters must feel when buying a new car, especially when they hadn’t planned to buy a new one for awhile and are forced to because of breakdowns, accidents, or other random acts of God.

My computer is an extension of my hands. I work on it and am online for 10-12 hours a day, and use it for leisure things like photo editing and other fun, too. It needs to have all the right hardware, and also “feel right”. This is the voodoo piece of buying a new computer — that little extra “thing”, whatever it is, that makes it feel like it’s mine. No salesman can do this for me. Unfortunately, it is often hard to convince them of that, particularly since I am female. A woman walking into the notebook area of a computer store seems to be an invitation for them to put on their patronizing cap and ooze lackaknowledge, even when smacked upside the head with it.

So I do what car buyers do — I test drive the machines to see how they feel, how they look, and how they respond. It drives salesmen nuts, and Friday was no exception. The only store that had all four of my first choices was CompUSA. I was sort of hoping that going there on the day after Thanksgiving would allow me to linger and play by myself for a bit, but no — they were all right there waiting to pounce.

“Can I help you?”

“No thanks, I know what I’m looking for, but give me your name and if I see it, I’ll be sure you write it up.” (translation: go away and leave me alone and if you do that, you’ll get the sale when I’m ready to buy)

(Quizzical look) “Well, tell me what you’re looking for. I’m sure I can help.”

“No, you can’t help because I know the four models I want to look at and you can’t know how they ‘feel’ to me. One more time — give me your name and leave me alone. I promise I’ll find you when I’m ready to buy it.”

I have now handed this guy the easiest sale on the planet if he’ll just go away. I don’t even care if he watches from across the aisle as long as I don’t have to listen to the incessant yammering about service contracts and how wonderful the DVD burner upgrade is and how great it is to be able to watch movies on the computer, etc. But he just can’t seem to leave it alone. No matter what I do to send him away, he keeps coming back like spyware that won’t shut down.

One last time, I ask him to just let me test-drive these machines in peace, and this time he gets it, but only begrudgingly….honestly, do these guys really think that because I have female chromosomes I am incapable of understanding how computers work, what they do and most importantly, what I want?

The Gateway tablet comes first, along with a problem. The demo Gateways are locked into an ad video loop, so that there’s no way to test them, test how the stylus feels on the screen, see how the display looks in a normal environment, or how the keyboard feels. No one, not even the salesman, can figure out how to unlock them from this routine — they boot into it and stay there. So both Gateways are crossed off my list.

On to the Sony Vaio. My first observation: Most of them are about $200 more than their competitors, and I keep looking for the value in that $200. I tried lots of different models, some better than others. It took awhile to find one that had my minimum requirements and the one that best fit those was the Vaio FJ170B. It met the minimum requirements, but the display was awful. Fuzzy text and graphics. Sony came off the list, which was actually a relief since I’m still ticked about their so-called CD DRM (translated: rootkit) trickery.

HP and Compaq were ruled out because of purely awful past experiences with their machines. My mom has an HP that she’s sent back three or four times for repairs. It’s only a year old. Friends occasionally ask me to either do upgrades or repairs to their HPs and Compaqs, but I won’t do it anymore because they have such weird setups….the printers are okay but for me, the computers are “no way”.

On to the Toshibas, then. From 2 aisles away I spotted one with a purely gorgeous display. Just dazzling. The color was pure, it was sharp as could be, and it was HUGE. 17″ of huge, yummy graphical heaven. I loaded up Microsoft Word in a blink, then went on to Acrobat Reader, which can be really slow…it snapped right up on the screen. So I started looking for the tag, because I was sure it was the one I’d seen online, but until I saw the tag with my own eyes, I had no intention of liking it too much.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw M-65 on the tag. Of course, the price was $250 more than what the big yellow tag said because I had no intention of buying one day of AOL, much less a year in exchange for the discount. I really felt like I’d found what I wanted, but the sensible me was speaking up and saying…wait…wait…be sure this is REALLY the one.

So I found the salesman and asked how long he’d be there, and went off to comparison-shop at the Fry’s Electronics across the street. I swear, the salesman from CompUSA had been cloned into a Fry’s salesman. After a half-hour of the same conversation I’d had a couple of hours ago across the street, I finally got rid of him and did a second pass through the Sonys and Toshibas with an identical result. I was just drawn to the look, feel and experience of using this machine. It was fast, snappy, and beautiful, even with its funky metallic orange cover. Thin and sexy, but full of power. Yep, this was the one.

I got another GB of RAM for $90,the free printer (which was why I opted for Fry’s over CompUSA), and the computer for $1,449.00…just under my limit. For Fry’s, Black Friday got a little bit better and for me, I went home with a really nice machine for about half of what I paid for my Dell just 3 years ago.

And the salesman still tried to sell me the stupid service contract and closed the deal with me like he was hand-holding his mother through a trauma. It wasn’t until he finished the paperwork that I corrected his assertion to the elderly ladies coming to buy the “notebook Oprah gave away“….he told them Office came with it, and I told them a DEMO came with it, and they should hold onto that Student and Teacher edition that was on sale for that one day only to buy with their new laptop. Then I helped another man who was confused about processor speeds and display modes. He bought a Sony too. I should’ve got a commission, because I sold more computers in my hour on the floor than my friend the patronizing salesman did.

Technorati Tags: toshiba m65, sony, gateway, compusa, frys electronics
black friday

After the initial state of denial where I kept insisting to myself that my Dell was NOT dead, I came to the state of acceptance and started looking at what I would replace it with.

Since the possibilities were limitless, I considered the coolness of buying a Tablet PC. They went on the top of the list.

I use an IBM Thinkpad to connect with the online job, and it’s pretty nice, if a bit wimpy. Worth considering, so I added it to the list of contenders, too.

Of course, I also added Dell onto the list along with Toshiba, since I had a high satisfaction level with their products in the past.

My requirements were (in no particular order): minimum 80GB hard drive, at least 1GB of RAM, Intel Pentium M processor or equivalent, a DVD burner and a really, really nice, clear bright display. A widescreen profile was desired but not required, and enough USB2.0 ports to connect my external mouse, printer, iPod and camera without a hub, if possible. A Firewire port was also required, since my video camera and external hard drive are Firewire. All of this for less than $1,500.

For all of my disorganization in life, my decision-making matrix for computer purchases is actually fairly well-organized. I start with my minimum requirements and preferred manufacturers and do comparisons until I arrive at the one I think I really want. Then I go try them out (the Dell was the only exception, but I heard so many glowing reviews that I was sold on it sight unseen).

The hitch this time around was the Mac. I confess: When I see those lovely Mac displays on the laps of the Starbucks glitterati, I covet one. I love the design, the brilliance of the display, and the apparent ease of use. Then I read this article where a power Windows user raves about the Mac OS…and I’m thinking real hard about buying one, so I started with that.

First disappointment: Even if I bought it at the Apple store on sale (they had a sale on Black Friday), I’d have to settle for an iBook — the Powerbooks were just completely outside of my price range. Then I started to consider software costs. To switch to MS Office was another $250. All of my Adobe apps are Windows, and I didn’t see a reasonably priced path to switch them to Mac-based apps. Since I have Photoshop and Premiere Elements, Audition, and Acrobat Professional, that could be a really pricey upgrade. I didn’t want to have to switch back and forth on my main computer between applications, and I’m still not clear on cross-platform compatibility of files, etc. Reluctantly, I crossed the Mac off my list, promising myself that if I had a windfall I’d think about getting the little iBook to plug into our Yamaha keyboard and play with someday…just so I could enjoy that pretty display and be one of the Starbucks elite (LOL!).

Dell has changed around their online store a lot. One of the things I don’t like is that if you don’t order the stock configuration you can find yourself waiting a LONG time for system delivery. Nevertheless, I started with the Dell Store. I started with the Inspiron 9300 and couldn’t get one configured for the price that I wanted, so switched to the Inspiron 6000. I was able to put it together for the price I was looking for, but time to ship was waaaaay too long. 3 weeks, minimum, because I was customizing it. I kept them on the list, but sent them to the back figuring that I’d go back to them if I really couldn’t find what I was looking for elsewhere. Bummer, because I’m a pretty loyal customer but couldn’t afford the wait….I do way too much work on this computer to not have it or limp along with the disabled Dell for 3 weeks, and figuring I might find what I wanted on eBay.

My online research yielded four more possibilities to consider. The Sony Vaio, Gateway Tablet PC, Toshiba M65, and Gateway notebook. Since I hadn’t tried any of these, I decided it was time for a fact-finding mission to my local CompUSA. On Black Friday, no less.

Technorati Tags: Mac, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, Notebooks

I’ve been away from my blog because when I returned from the Irish Dance championships, I came home to my trusty Dell Inspiron 8200, dead as a doornail. Panicked, I shut it down, unplugged everything, and rebooted. Everything worked just as it always did — I could hear the fan and the hard drive and the little musical WindowsXP boot ditty, but nothing was on the display. Just a blank, dark hole.

I plugged in the external flat panel and rebooted — behold! A screen — exactly half of an extended desktop, with the start bar and just about everything else on the dead screen. After some intensive troubleshooting it was apparent that it wasn’t just a rogue driver — the backlight on the screen had died. I could make out vague shapes on the Dell screen by shining a Maglight directly on it, but it was a real challenge to get the dialog boxes dragged over to the second display, and I couldn’t get the Function Keys to just turn off the desktop extension and make the external display the sole display, try as I might.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I had a laptop that was half of its former self. Screen backlights are not cheap to fix and I was three days out of a three-year service contract. (Planned obsolescence?) Most important, there’s no way I could be without my primary machine for the time it would take to repair it. Plus…I loved my Dell. I loved how the keyboard felt, was laid out, how the display looked, the wonderful high resolution, the snappy performance — everything. When the hard drive began to feel a bit crowded, I added an external to store my photos and documents. When I started working on site designs, I added the external monitor so I could view the site in a couple of browsers at once. I thought my Dell and I would be partners for a very long time yet.

There was NO WAY I was even considering replacing it, and certainly not the day after Thanksgiving with a month to go till Christmas. But that was exactly what I did.

I ended up with a Toshiba M65 and a RAM upgrade to 1.5 GB. How I arrived at this choice is a topic for a separate post, but I will say that the price and feature set were right — really right.

So far, the only thing I’m not thrilled with is the keyboard. It’s clicky and has an ITTY-BITTY shift key on the right (half the size of a normal one), so that when I hit “shift”, I usually end up hitting the “Up” arrow right next to it instead, which really, really annoys me. I am making a conscious effort to make myself get used to that key, but if it keeps being a pain I may end up with any right-handed upper-case letters being lower-case just because I’m sick of hitting the wrong darn key.

It came with a free Epson printer and a decent rebate, too. The printer is an all-in-one, with slots for Compact Flash and SD cards. The computer, on the other hand, has slots for memory stick and xD cards — formats I don’t currently use. Fortunately the slots on the printer match the format for my NikonD70, so offloading and printing photos is a real breeze now.

After 2 days of transferring files, reinstalling programs and tweaking settings, I’m back in the saddle and catching up.

Technorati Tags: Toshiba M65, desktop replacement, dell