Last night's task was linking my blog to the class wiki. Five steps were recommended to reach this goal: 1. click on "edit this page" at top; 2. type name and name of blog; 3. highlight name of blog; 4. click on link icon (world with chain around it); 5. press SAVE button on right-hand side of page.
Getting oriented is always the first challenge--i.e., remembering urls, passwords, usernames. How do people remember all of these things? I write them down and I still have trouble. I mix them up. After the umpteenth try, though, I found the wiki and my blog and set to completing the assignment.
I did as directed. My blog link did not, however, look like the others'. There was no green arrow. The line under my blog link started under the second letter, leaving the first letter with no underline. When I clicked on it, nothing happened.
I was not surprised. I felt no anger. Same ol' same ol'. The night would be long. I was tired. Oh well. If at first you don't succeed, try again. I repeated the steps two more times with the same result.
Then the voices started: so what else is new? You never do anything right the first time. Everyone else did the assignment. I bet they didn't get stuck. What am I doing in library science?!?
I didn't know what to do next, but I knew I couldn't quit. So I waited. Then, to my astonishment, I heard a muffled bubble sound with a little pop at the end. What was that? - I wondered. This orange box appeared on the lower tool bar. I clicked on it. Up popped my son like a genie out of a bottle! Magical, wonderful SKYPE to the rescue! My brother had introduced me to skype last spring, but I never used it. Somehow, son Sasha got my contact info (obviously from my brother). I clicked on the green telephone receiver, and, voila! there he was, beautiful boy, asking me how I was. I told him my problem, and he said, "Ma, we're on skype so we can talk and still use our hands to type." So I sat talking into my computer (!) while typing in code to link people to my weblog. Step by step, he followed me through my blog and the wiki. He said that he could see my classmates' hypertext (http) mark-up where their blog links were, but that there was none at mine. He described the others' link format, and I copied it and added it to my blog info: [[http://www.sueparblog.blogspot.com/|SueParBlog]], and, lo and behold, I managed to link my blog to the class wiki.
It does not feel like a victory, though, because I had dead-ended, as usual, and would have sat there, dumb, had my son not called and seen the problem. Why couldn't I see the mark-up that he saw? Why didn't the 5-step directions work? How could I ever have completed that assignment on my own, given what I knew?
I have moved one step away from the brink of flunking. But what will I do when I start my first job as a librarian? I must be better at technology, so, no matter how stupid I look, I will keep swimming.
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I think that succeeding with technology is a lot about attitude. I hope that in the course of this class I can toughen you up so that instead of beating yourself up when you struggle with learning a new tool you will take it out on the tool, poor inanimate thing that it is (look at my blog and you will see that this is my approach). Or better last night to have cursed your teacher, yours truly, who left out a critical step in the instructions, rather than think of yourself as a failure. Hang in there and take help where and when you can get it. Another key to technological success is a willingness to work with and learn from others. All hail the team!!
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