{"id":1320250,"date":"2020-05-28T23:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/toussaint-column-covid-is-the-teacher-technology-is-the-subject\/"},"modified":"2020-05-28T23:08:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T05:08:00","slug":"toussaint-column-covid-is-the-teacher-technology-is-the-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/toussaint-column-covid-is-the-teacher-technology-is-the-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"Toussaint column: COVID is the teacher; technology is the subject"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"681\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-26-at-12.20.23-AM-1024x681.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-26-at-12.20.23-AM-1024x681.png 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-26-at-12.20.23-AM-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-26-at-12.20.23-AM-768x511.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-26-at-12.20.23-AM.png 1036w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"><\/p><figcaption><strong>Nicolette Toussaint<\/strong><br \/><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\"><span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">Experience is the teacher,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\"><span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">But here\u2019s what makes me burn;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\"><span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">She\u2019s always teaching me the things<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\"><span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">I do not care to learn.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\" readability=\"6\">\n<div class=\"row gspi-donation gspi-donation-mobile p-0\" readability=\"7\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\" onclick=\"handleDonationButtonClickMidArticle()\">Donate<\/button><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I don\u2019t know who wrote that doggerel, but it sums up my feelings about technology rather neatly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I\u2019m not sure whether COVID-19 has been the teacher, or just the mother of necessity. But whether we cared to or not, the experience of social distancing has been teaching us seniors quite a bit about technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Oddly enough, many of my Boomer friends consider me a technology wiz. (For the first few weeks, it seemed I should have Zoom Consultant business cards to hand out, even though I was learning only by the seat of my pants.) My friend Niki says she\u2019s overheard her husband fret, \u201cNicolette could figure this out in about two minutes!\u201d My 1930-model husband refers to me as his \u201clive-in geek.\u201d And last week, as I was telling my friend Robin Waters about teaching drawing classes via Zoom, she proclaimed, \u201cYou\u2019re a myth buster!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">What myth, I asked?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The one about seniors and technology. Robin \u2014 she of many skills, talents and careers \u2014 worked as a gerontology consultant for 10 years in Washington, D.C. One myth she often encountered was that you \u201ccouldn\u2019t teach old dogs new tricks.\u201d Seniors are too stubborn, intransigent, inflexible or non-adaptive to learn new technology. (Yes, that idea has a long tail. Britain\u2019s Two Ronnies aired a hilarious \u201cfrozen blackberry\u201d sketch in 2002. In 2017, Saturday Night Live riffed on \u201cAlexa Silver,\u201d a fictitious Alexa that\u2019s <span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">loud<\/span> and responds to \u201cAlaina, Allegra, Alfonzo, Excedrin\u201d\u2026any name remotely like Alexa.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I\u2019m not sure I deserve much tech credit. What I am, mostly, is fearless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I\u2019m unafraid to ask questions that might sound foolish. I\u2019m indebted to Lacy Dunlavy, our Carbondale Branch Library manager. In a local COVID-19 Facebook group, she offered help in navigating the Garfield County Libraries\u2019 online resources \u2014 and she answered a passel of my questions, questions that generally led to still more questions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In addition to risking embarrassment, I\u2019m also willing to experiment. I\u2019m confident that, nowadays, our computerized devices are pretty well idiot-proofed. It\u2019s not like when I taught myself DOS or jumped into WordPress and could crash. These days, because I know I can\u2019t break it, I wasn\u2019t afraid to try out all the menus on the Roku I ordered from e-Bay: What does this button do? And what does <span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">this<\/span> button do?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">If worse comes to worst \u2014 if I get a \u201c403 forbidden error\u201d or encounter the white screen of death \u2014 there\u2019s always Google. However I may have transgressed, someone else has trespassed there before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Experience is the teacher, and these days, she has not only written her lessons across the internet, she has also videotaped them. Need to replace a Garmin battery? There\u2019s an instructional video for that. Need to know the difference between a mini USB-A and B? YouTube will show you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">There\u2019s even a YouTube video, created by a grade-school teacher, that demonstrates how to use your cellphone as a document camera during a Zoom class. (It\u2019s charming; she shows you how to stack soup cans to suspend your phone above your student\u2019s paper. No dongle needed!)<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Social distancing has pushed plenty of us into Zoom land \u2014 where we may or may not have learned how to unmute ourselves or how to keep pet photobombing at bay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Social distancing has prompted me to measure my internet connection speeds (Just .3 Mbs for upload? It takes 1.2 Mbps just to Skype!) My quest for better connections \u2014 during a time when support techs were barred from entering my house \u2014 first led to my watching videos about moving and aligning a satellite dish, then later to tracing and labeling all the abandoned coaxial and Cat 5 cables in my basement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In a subsequent installment, I bought two Kindles and learned how to use the Garfield County Libraries\u2019 Overdrive app. Then I purchased a Roku on e-Bay and \u201cinstalled\u201d it on the smart TV. (I thought the old TV was smart enough, frankly, but after my adventurous cat climbed, crashed and creamed it, I wound up learning things I didn\u2019t care to learn.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">All in all, my covidian tech adventures haven\u2019t turned out too badly. By pushing all the Roku\u2019s buttons, I found it was fairly easy to get into those Kanopy movies that Lacy, our Carbondale librarian, mentioned online. And wonder of wonders, my 89-year-old husband not only adjusted to reading on his Kindle, he says he actually likes it better than physical books.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">See? You <span class=\"STND:STND BodyText Italic\">can<\/span> teach old dogs new tricks. You can even get quarantined humans to go out and howl with the pack at 7 p.m. each night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Nicolette Toussaint lives in Carbondale. Her column appears monthly in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/opinion\/columns\/toussaint-column-covid-is-the-teacher-technology-is-the-subject\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicolette Toussaint Experience is the teacher, But here\u2019s what makes me burn; She\u2019s always teaching me the things I do not care to learn. Support Local Journalism Donate I don\u2019t know who wrote that doggerel, but it sums up my feelings about technology rather neatly. I\u2019m not sure whether COVID-19 has been the teacher, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1320250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 03:03:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}