Resolving problems by creating even more; what's wrong w/ a snow day?

There are times when I think the technologically-advanced amongst our society ought to be told to “stifle” themselves, what with the way they think a computer device is the solution to everything they could possibly think of.

Is she really learning a thing?

Maybe it’s just the “Archie Bunker” within me, or the realization that the copy I generate now isn’t any more literate than the copy I produced three decades ago when I was banging it out on assorted varieties of battered typewriters

BUT SOMEHOW I am repulsed by the idea of a bill now pending before Gov. Bruce Rauner – one that purports to offer the “solution” to the problem of students missing so much school during the winter months due to inclement weather.

The dreaded snow days that cause school to be closed, and more days having to be tacked on to the end of the academic year at a time when the summer weather can make a hot-and-humid school building a very unpleasant place to have to be.

The bill in question calls for a pilot program to be operated in up to three school districts during the 2017-18 academic year in which teachers would provide class assignments via computer for those days in which the snow is so heavy or the temperatures so cold that kids can’t come to class.

In short, there won’t be any need for school to not be in session. Perhaps a “virtual” classroom is the wave of the future.

THE IDEA BEING that this pilot program would be a one-year experiment that could – if it works out – someday be expanded to the nearly 1,000 school districts located across Illinois.

Personally, I hate the idea, because it pushes us in the direction of thinking that kids are somehow better off parked in front of a computer screen in their own homes rather than having to get off their duffs and interact with real human beings.

Which as far as I’m concerned is the whole purpose of education – it’s not like much of the facts and figures we were taught remain all that relevant. So much of it is now obsolete.

RAUNER: Give that man a veto pen!!!

What we really learned was how to learn, and keep learning and updating our collection of information so that we can get through our lives.

THAT EVEN EXTENDS to the idea of use of computers within the modern-day classroom. We’re teaching kids about technology that won’t matter anymore by the time they’re adults. It’s not the computer they should be learning – it’s the things they do with a computer that matter.

I’m also realistic enough to know that trying to teach class by computer is not the least bit realistic – in part because there are parts of Illinois where Internet access is weak even if one has the money to spare.

In other situations, there are people for whom paying for a decent Internet connection at home means adding to the utility bills that already are too high. And I can already hear the conservative ideologue types complain about the idea of having to provide an Internet connection to those people who can’t afford it.

This is an idea concocted by someone who thinks it’s the computer itself that matters most in life. An idea I find absolutely abhorrent – even though I own a laptop computer and am fortunate enough to have an Internet connection at home and several other places nearby for those occasions when my own connection dies out due to technological glitches.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE there are those who disagree. I have been in classrooms as a reporter-type person where I see too many kids think of their smart-boards (kind of like a chalk-board, only hooked up to the computer so the teacher can post things from the Internet on it) as being some sort of super-cool video game.

I doubt they learned a thing.  Somehow, I’m skeptical they would learn anything lasting on a cold-and-snowy day in January when they weren’t able to go to school. Somehow, I suspect the television set would get paid more attention than the laptop.

Maybe the solution is to bring back a 21^st Century take of Miss Frances, the 1950’s television host who gave us “Ding Ding School” – “the nursery school of the air.”

What would a 21st Century Miss Frances be like?

Then again, maybe that’s where this latest screwy idea came from. Let’s only hope that Rauner winds up showing some sense and vetoing this particular bill.

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My ‘isolation’ is over; it's great to be back in touch again w/ the masses even if much of their talk is trash

You don’t know how grateful I feel to be able to post this commentary and reconnect with the few of you who have nothing better to do than check out this weblog.

If you were reading it, you’d notice there were no updates for Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with issues to rant and rage about.

IT’S THAT I experienced a level of technical difficulties that made it complicated to try to comment to the point where I figured it wasn’t worth the while. So I’m back, and now more fully appreciate how just much we as a society have become tied in to our communications technology.

I’m trying to figure out whether that is a plus or a minus.

What happened was that my cellphone developed technical difficulties with its connections. For the past couple of days, it was just a piece of junk that couldn’t do anything other than tell me what time it was.

My ability to make phone calls on it conked out during the weekend, and my ability to receive and send e-mail messages (along with access anything on the Internet) died when I woke up Monday morning.

IT WASN’T UNTIL Wednesday morning that I was able to work out the kinks of the system and get my device fully restored to all the little services it provides that I apparently have become attached to.

Now there was one plus to my situation; I never lost access to the land line telephone at home. But for the past couple of days, that was my sole connection to the outside world.

Suddenly, I had to recall exactly what my home telephone number was, and I have to admit it took me a minute or so to do that. I’ve become too accustomed to thinking in terms of my smart phone number when I give out a contact for myself.

The inability to get on the Internet from home made it impossible for me to easily post new commentary here. Although I suppose I could have written it, stored the copy on the hard drive of this computer I’m now using, then send it all out when full service was restored.

ALTHOUGH I DOUBT anybody would care about my pre-State of the Union thoughts in this post-State time period. So I’ll spare you.

Or I could have traveled to my local public library and used one of their computers to file copy. Although that would have been a hassle, and I must admit to feeling a little more compassion for those individuals who are in situations where they have to rely on public computers in order to take care of any personal business.

I must admit that Tuesday was a particularly nerve-wracking period because the paranoid portion of my personality was starting to wonder if this lack of contact was going to stretch out indefinitely. I was wondering if I’d ever get restored, or if I was going to have to seriously adapt my daily routine.

As it turned out, I was at a restaurant Wednesday morning with my brother having breakfast when the quirks got worked out. It was something of a relief to “refresh” my cellphone and see a flood of e-mail messages come in – some 95 on my personal e-mail account and 46 on the g-mail account whose address is published on this weblog.

ALTHOUGH I MUST confess to realizing how little I had actually missed – I’d say I deleted about 90 percent of the messages unread because they were just too obsolete.

So all those political operatives who sent me their statements reacting to the State of the Union Address Tuesday night will have to learn that their attempt to influence my thoughts were unsuccessful.

I am not the least bit dizzy from their political spin, although I’m sure they will continue to try to influence me on future issues with their rhetorical junk.

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How reliant we are on computers

If you're one of those rare people who actually checks into this weblog on a regular basis, you will have noticed there was nothing fresh on Monday.

My days-old commentary about the coming of winter-like weather had to suffice for an extra day.

IT IS BECAUSE I experienced technical glitches so severe that I had to break down on Monday and spend some money in order to buy myself a new computer. My now-former laptop computer developed a glitch so severe that I could no longer rely upon it to write copy.

I could still scan the internet. But there were certain letters on my keyboard that no longer functioned properly.

Such as the letter "o," which everytime I hit that key would cause the keyboard to start spewing out an endless supply of o's that would have turned my thoughts into even more gibberish than they already were.

And yes, in this particular case, I know exactly what provoked my 3 1/2-year-old computer to crash. A few drops of Coca-Cola got spilled into the part of the keyboard where O, L and P congregate.

IT WAS ENOUGH to make my old device functionally useless and require me to buy my new HP-brand computer, which came already loaded with Windows 8 -- so I get an upgrade technologically for my moments of clumsiness last week.

As it was, I filed the commentary about winter weather from a computer at a public library -- which isn't something I relish the thought of doing on a regular basis.

Besides, too much of my living as a freelance writer requires that I have a functioning keyboard to grind out copy -- along with a reliable way of transmitting it via e-mail.

Which is a condition I suspect most of us deal with in our lives these days. In fact, it amazed me just how cut off I felt from the rest of the world during this past weekend with an inability to just log on to my laptop computer and check things out.

ADMITTEDLY, I STILL had a functioning smart-phone (one of those Nokia Lumia devices) that allowed me to continue to check my e-mail (which I rely on for work-related messages) and to do limited checking of the Internet.

Although off those dinky little screens, it becomes a pain in the buttocks to try to read anything of any length on any particular website.

As it is, this is the first piece of copy I am writing on my new machine. I'm trying to get the feel of how it functions, and my ability to grind out copy is definitely slowed as I try to figure out how all of this works.

Because this particular laptop computer actually looks more like my smart-phone. It seems like it is designed for people who want to view their machines as something to play with -- rather than just a tool to do actual work with.

THEN AGAIN, I always suspected that I was different than many people (particularly the younger generation) in that I'm interested in the actual content I'm viewing on this machine -- rather than spending time on the machine itself.

If all of this reads like I'm some sort of aging malcontent who can't quite get with the program, perhaps you're right. Because a part of me wonders how much different the next laptop computer I purchase will be from this machine.

It definitely makes me reminisce fondly of the first laptop I ever purchased -- one that I managed to get seven years worth of use out of. That is a statistic that manages to amaze every technological geek I ever encounter.

They seem to be too used to the idea of replacing something every couple of years.

ALTHOUGH I DO have to admit to one bit of pleasure from my new purchase -- the price.

For someone who can be a cheap as I can be at times, I was amazed at how inexpensive these devices have become.

Particularly since that aforementioned first laptop cost just over $1,000, while the second one (the one that died last week due to Atlanta's finest soft drink) cost me just over $600.

This one was about $475 -- and that includes a couple of upgrades to add memory, along with all the taxes that assorted county, state and federal entities added to my purchase.

WILL THE DAY come when I can get one of these overelaborate typewriters (I am old enough to remember when professional copy was typed out on actual paper, then mailed to a publisher via the U.S. Postal Service) for a couple hundred bucks?

Perhaps. But I'm also wondering if the day is coming when the machines will be designed to take my oral dictation and convert it into printed words; including all the "uhs," "ums" and "you knows?"

Somehow, it doesn't sound like progress to me.

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