Emails to David 3: Digital Tools and This Teacher

Dear David:

I have a great deal of hard copy resources, in my veteran teacher cupboards, and a great deal of resources stored digitally, mostly in bookmarks and in digital copies of hard copy material. [All photos . . . come from a few keystrokes with Google. So . . . they are NOT my office.]

About 12 years ago, my internet access sped up at the school then employing me. And suddenly, I could access so much stuff of use to me as I prepared classes or just to enhance my scholarship. So I did access it. And I saved stuff digitally, but mostly I printed the material and put the material in 3-ring binders.

Very quickly, I found myself overwhelmed and, frankly, anxious about how much stuff there is "that I must read!"

I quickly noted that the Law of Diminishing Returns had kicked in and I hadn't really noticed. In other words, I had been teaching my classes well, introducing good stuff, changing the curriculum formally and ad hoc, etc. And I had been doing this partially because I had kept orderly . . . cupboards, cupboards which I culled nearly every summer.

I note that a cupboard can only hold so much stuff. The area may not be an ideal space for storing material in that it may be too big or too small. The space was given me and arbitrarily so. But the space is limited and so it does compel me to revisit and reassess material.


Digitally storing? The Cloud is nearly infinite and so I fear I could become more acquisitive and, thus, less discriminating and less thoughtful. I hoard as if hoarding alone increases my scholarship. Moreover, I spend more time with my face in my laptop. Sure, a book is just another technology to convey symbols, but my cupboards and shelves and my library and my desk and my reading chair and my bedstand and my favorite cafe and my dining table and my sofa require somehow more human interactions with material. But this may not seem sensible to 14 year old.

And, I know, it's the human who makes a book or a bedstand human. I'll humanize whatever tech you throw at me. In the future, some child might say, "You could only carry one book at a time and they could be kinda' heavy?!!? It's inhuman!"

The future beckons and it's not beckoning on paper.

g