Professor Rowe Gives a Presentation

Julia came home from school with an I-Pad today; all 6th graders are loaned one for the school year and submit their homework electronically.  Of course, this I-Pad came with a homework sheet for parents, requiring us to sit down with our children to help them connect to our home Wi-Fi and download the required apps.  Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of parental homework I have had to do this week, from filling out mounds of paperwork to writing a paper to Julia's teachers on my child as a learner to selecting and ordering important print photos that reflect Madeleine's life and interests as inspiration for her Writer's Workshop, I completely shut down over this latest I-Pad homework.  I expressed my sense of helplessness to Ethan over the phone, hoping he'd offer to do this piece of homework with Julia.

Instead, Ethan came to the conclusion that all of the girls in the Rowe household are cognitively deficient in the technology department.  (I mean, he's not WRONG, but...)

So when Ethan got home from work, he sat us all down for an important presentation.  He had his white board going and everything:

This is literally how the presentation began:

ETHAN: Okay.  I need everybody to sit on the couch and pay attention.
JULIA, MADELEINE, AND I: (getting situated on the couch)
ETHAN: (uncapping his dry erase marker and writing the word INTERNET on his white board)  INTER-net.  What does that mean?
JULIA: Computers!!
ETHAN: Inter-net.  What does "inter" mean?
JULIA: (silence)
ETHAN: The word "inter."  Like an "Interfaith gathering."  Have you ever heard of that?
JULIA: Uh, yeah.
ETHAN: So what would an interfaith gathering be?
JULIA: Uh...
ETHAN: A gathering of people, each with a different faith.  So, you would have Catholics, and Orthodox, and Jews, and Muslims, and they'd all get together and have an Interfaith meeting and talk about their faith.
JULIA: Wait, so they'd say,  like, "My face is very LARGE?"
ME: InterFAITH, Julia, not interFACE.
JULIA: Oh! (cracking up)
ME: (rushing out of the room to start this blog)
ETHAN: (irritated) Courtney.
ME: What?  Oh, I have to be watching the presentation?

Yeah, he definitely wanted me there.  He counts me among the cognitively deficient tech people.

The presentation went on for awhile, and that white board kept displaying one diagram or collection of symbols after another:

This is a social network.  Ethan had to draw if out for us after we failed to sufficiently explain what a social network is.  We said Facebook.  We were wrong.

Then we got to learn about WiFi.

Then about WiFi versus Mobile (which can also be called Cellular.)


Long story short: not only have I been setting up my own classroom at work, hosting my incoming students for an Open House, taking a CPR refresher class and attending staff meetings, I've also been doing homework from my kid's teachers.  And if that isn't getting me in the academic mood enough, I got to attend a Technology Class this evening, put on by my very Tech-Savvy Husband.  I don't think I could be feeling the Back-to-School vibe more if I tried!!