Random Thoughts: Change, Primary Sources & Other Stuff

As I begin another exciting adventure in online teaching I’ve been reflecting on how my childhood and teenage interests have reemerged in new ways. I had many snail mail pen pals as a teenager and remained in contact with two of them well into adulthood. I loved communicating with friends from “far away” and getting to know them. I was an early technology adapter and started using email and the Internet early. Does anyone remember Pine Mail and Gopher?

Basketball was another childhood early interest ; I rarely, if ever, missed a high school basketball game and traveled on the boys’ team players’ bus to out of town games as a junior high student. (my father was the bus driver!) Now, I never miss a Winona State University mens basketball home game–and watch streaming video of the away games in the comfort of my home computer room! Search YouTube for Winona State University Basketball; Select the Cotton Eye Joe link and you’ll see why its so fun.

One of the coolest projects I saw high school students completing last week was plotting their biorythms with Excel. They were quite engaged. Quite a change from the first biorhythm plot I saw . . . . pages of plots printed on “old style” computer paper coming out of a terminal. . . .