Current mood:	rushed
Current music:	click click of Erin's keyboard

Week One, Part Deux
My undergraduate institution, at the time I was a student there, was technology-bound. Right before I entered my freshman year, the school built a shiny new "tech" building with state-of-the-art computers, photo-manipulating software, programming software, etc. All the classrooms were "smart" classrooms with internet connections for students at each seat, digital projectors, and a "smart board" where anything written on a white board with a marker would appear in another window as text.

Even with all of this access, I still found that most teachers and students did not utilize it as fully as the school had envisioned. I never saw a student take their laptop to class and connect it to the port. Teachers used the projectors, but only for one sparse, rigid Power Point presentation after another. Students weren't allowed to even enter the digital photo workshop unless they had proof of an assignment and were accompanied by a faculty member or a member of the tech staff. So no students or staff used that room at all, and it ended up becoming a "playpen" for the tech staff (yes, that is an apt metaphor).

The effect of all of this was that I had to discover a lot of technology on my own, and outside of educational contexts. I made my first personal webpage when I started college, and started learning digital photo manipulation and html. But, this was only because I wanted to entertain myself and put out an online presence to others that was completely personal and outside the realm of school and education. If the school wanted to provide me with technology--which they did in the form of internet access and a laptop buying program--I was more likely to use it for recreation rather than education.