Lately, we’ve seen photos of gleeful students being awarded personal laptop computers: the reward for completing a course, program or workshop.
The prize, to be sure, is not really a freebie; students need to complete some course of study; nor is the windfall restricted to this area, as schools have for years lured students by offering them free computers.
Changes have taken place regarding the ages of the users. Remember when only Dad and Mom could use the behemoth Radio Shack TRS-80 computers of the past, and allowed Junior to touch it only under supervision? The mantra used to be, “Don’t touch it — you’ll break it!”
Our granddaughters come over often — surely it’s to visit their favorite paternal grandparents — but sometimes with the request to use a laptop to play games. Permission (usually) granted, much to their delectation.
Yes, things have changed.
As a reporter covering school board meetings in the Midwest in the ‘60s, I witnessed what almost turned into fisticuffs when board members quarreled over what one called “the preposterous notion of allowing junior high school students to operate typewriters.” The most bellicose and belligerent board member argued that typewriters, even the manual kind, are expensive and likely to break.
The other board member countered with, “Well, we let junior high kids blow through expensive band instruments.”
Nowadays, I still shudder as I mutter, “Carly, be sure to use both hands” as my older granddaughter totes a $1,500 piece of delicate equipment with hands that haven’t yet been around for eight summers.
So far, my PowerBook has not been dropped (that I know of).
Impressive is the deftness with which kids like Carly, and her sister, Celina, 5, get around the keyboard. Most kids in the elementary grades appear much more proficient than their grandparental counterparts, who struggled with manual typewriters back in the day.
At our home, my dad occasionally allowed us to use his portable Underwood, which had such then-high tech features as an automatic ribbon reverse and a bell to signal we were reaching the end of the (typed) line.
Later, in typing class at Immaculate Conception High School, many of us construed that typewriter bell as a signal for a coffee break, a concession our teacher, Sister Charles Therese, found groundless and refused to grant as a perk.
What’s the next step for educational technology? Will students use a device so compact and comprehensive that they can even print out their diploma with a couple of taps of a stylus?
Or has that time already arrived? Sandy Poppers recently showed us a cell phone that contains a GPS, iPod, movie-viewing, Internet access, alarm, calendar, scheduler, voice mail and a host of other features, possibly even brewing coffee.
We’ve come a long way from the time when we needed to remain close to the phone that had separate ear- and mouth-pieces, and speak distinctly and quickly, lest the operator instruct us to insert another nickel.
Computers have their fun sides too. Notice how many laptops contain card games such as solitaire or shoot-em-ups.
As a middle-school student in the early ‘80s when the fledgling computer scene took hold, my son Stan, like many classmates, explored the gaming side of computers. Stan even proposed what he called a “boss screen,” which gets activated when the boss enters the room; a single key stroke hides the PacMan game and instantly displays some oh-so-complicated quadratic equations and the periodic table of the elements. Sounds good, but what if the boss were to say, “Wow, that looks impressive. I wonder if you’d mind explaining all that to me”?
Yet, one wonders whether complimentary laptops will become a bona fide tool for the acquisition of knowledge or simply another device that enables kids to stay indoors more, become less utile and more removed from others.
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There are lists of some of the prettiest- and ugliest-sounding words, compiled by experts. Word master Wilfred Funk lists words like “fawn,” “chalice,” “tranquil,” “hush,” “halcyon” and “lullaby” as among the most beautiful.
And the ugliest? Try “cacophony,” “crunch,” “flatulent,” “gripe,” “jazz” “sap” and “treachery.”
My choice for the Katherine Zeta Jones of beautiful-sounding words is “matutinal,” a word I used in last week’s column. It’s a Latin term meaning early morning.
And the ugliest? That’s easy: Dallas Cowboys. But I myself wonder whether the reaction is to the phonics of the words, or what they represent.
A frequent contributor, Ben Moffett, a retired sports writer, wrote that in his 68 years, he’d never heard “matutinal.” Gotcha, Ben. Moffett also provided a retronym, which is a term that has become necessary in order to separate the old from the new. He wrote, “‘Drinking water’ was used to distinguish it from water one couldn’t drink because it came from a questionable source.” And “‘Light bread’ came into use to distinguish it from the rock-hard biscuits that (someone else’s) mom served up. Our moms always made the best biscuits on the planet.”
Moffett’s right. The biscuits our mothers made went straight down the hatch; the biscuits that some other mothers buttered went into our pockets, in anticipation of rock fights at school. And the unpropelled biscuits, which we called “tarugos,” served as door stops.
Also from the mail bag . . .
Bonnie Bolton, a utilization review coordinator with the Department of Health, responded to a recent column on humorous headlines. She recalled a headline in the Van Wert (Ohio) Times Bulletin. It read, “Lions Club Tours Funeral Home as Body.” Bolton added, “How we share information may have changed, but malapropisms persist.”