Saturday, November 21, 2009

Wall-E, the Flu, and Me

I was taken with the movie Wall-E. I was fascinated with the animation, and how I could be entertained by an animated piece of technology. I was also a little horrified how close to the truth the depictions of future humanity might be. So what does this have to do with the 'flu.

I'm one of those teachers who has been stricken with the "flu du jour". I'm also an asthmatic. The two don't go together well, and suffice it to say extreme fatigue, aches, pains, and coughs have kept me away from work this week in the flesh. (I thought it would be extremely rude of me to cough in parents' faces during parent-teacher -interviews even though I've finished a course of Tamiflu.)

Interestingly enough, despite my illness and because of technology, I've been "working" a lot.

No matter how sick I am, no matter how much sleep I need, I still need something to do when laying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. To the rescue: wireless internet and a laptop.

Most of what I do with my laptop has to do with...you guessed....work. On it I can make up my dayplan, email my sub, mark emailed assignments, and enter marks all done between naps and creative staring at the wall. My sub is email literate and we've emailed back and forth during class time. I've even made up two quizzes and a new social studies major assignment. I'm not to the point Eldon G. was where he was teaching from Edmodo, but the possibility is there. I could see myself teaching from my laptop connected continuously to my ever-becoming-techno-literate sub!!! (She's great! Always up for a new challenge).

It scares me to think how much like one of the techno-humans of Wall-E I've become.