Creativity and education

      As a returning college student, I discovered that somewhere along the path of my life, I had misplaced the confidence I had as a young student about school.  I needed to rediscover the faith and believe, truly believe, that if I applied time and effort to my studies, I could indeed still learn new things.  Sir Ken Robinson comments in a video clip, "In education, creativity is as important now as literacy and numeracy."  He goes on to say that "everyone has immense creative capacity" evident especially in young children who still have a great "confidence in their perceptions."  I have discovered that today, as an adult with multiple years of experience in my wake, I am still most successful in school when I am in touch with my inner child.  When I hold an attitude of excitement and  impatient anticipation about learning something new, I cast away the suspicious and cynical voices that can sometimes greet the innovations in knowledge and technology.  When I trust that my perceptions are valid and are a product of my entire life experience, my authentic creativity has room to be expressed.

Literacy and the computer machine...

So...Just this week I signed up for Face Book and reconnected with some of my old school chums.  It was the biggest triumph so far of this 'computer literacy' class I'm taking at school.  Along with learning that I have been left out of the information loop of friends and family, I realized that the computer is just a machine.  And, I am good with machines.  When I know how they are supposed to work, I can use them and I can fix them.  My expectation is that as I learn more about how computers work, I will soon become much more time efficient with my school projects and essays.  My biggest challenge remains understanding how to fix a problem when one occurs.  When there is a problem now, I push the panic button and speed dial my daughter's phone.

Technology....

And so what happened that day, that infamous day when gleaming technology blinded eyes with its brilliance, you ask?  Well, it happened something like this...

I left the office for a lunch break, so what I am about to tell you was reconstructed from eye witness accounts. All that I know for sure is that when I returned from lunch, there was paper scattered into every corner and upon every surface in the office, the copy machine was out of paper and out of ink.  The fax machine was blinking and the telephone was ringing. 

It seems that one of our electricians, in fact, our top electrician, our guru, our go-to-guy for all things electrical had come into the office to fax a wiring diagram to a local customer. There he confronted the gleaming machine of wonder, just recently programed by the tech-savvy teenager.  The machine was ready to earn its purchase price by its efficiency. 

Well, as the story goes, the diagram was placed on the machine and all was in readiness for one copy.  As his finger hoovered over the 'go' button, the telephone rang, the doorbell buzzed, and in a flash, the finger had come down on the button.  There was no turning back, the rocket had been launched, the diagram was on its way to being copied and becoming two perfect renditions of wiring diagram perfection  -- with one small problem.  The electrician's big finger had hit the 'go' button just slightly off center and instead of making one small copy, the machine, thinking this was its one great chance to really impress its new owners, launched 'GO' and a copy of this wiring diagram was sent to every vendor with a fax number. Every vendor on the list that our tech-savvy teenager had just entered into memory.  And then, with great flourish, the gleaming machine, the state-of-the-art-all-in-one-hulk-of-a-honey-copy-fax-and (well, never mind) machine dutifully made a copy of every transaction.

It was a couple of weeks, before vendors stopped calling to ask for an explanation of the drawing.  It has been some years now, and still, occasionally, someone close to the situation will recall the incident and muse, "I wonder why he didn't just pull the plug?"  I wonder....

Technology meets tradition.

     The day we got the new fax machine was an exciting day!  The old copy machine had finally expired and we replaced the smelly old dinosaur with a gleaming silver copy/fax machine combo.  Bruce, the high school student who helped us out part time after school, programmed in the phone numbers of all the suppliers and vendors on our phone list.  Now, instead of calling on the telephone to order supplies for our electrical contracting and hardware business, or mailing a written order with a stamp, we could fax an order.  Everything had always been hand written, and that tradition would continue in the family owned business until the next generation of owners took over, but the day that state-of-the-art-copy-fax-with-phone-feature-wonder-machine arrived was a big day indeed.  It was the beginning of a technological invasion that would challenge hard held traditions, amaze with its efficiency and frustrate with its quirks. I remember one day.......one day the clash between technology and tradition was an incident heard 'round-the-world -- or at least in every corner of the world programmed into the *#%#* wonder machine...