Hi. My name is Michaela (audience members: “Hi, Michaela”) and I am technologically handicapped. My support groups consists of online forums with equally technologically-retracted human beings who also do not know the answers to my questions. My personal readings outside of our assigned readings have been PDF excerpts of HTML for Dummies that are scattered online. This is the 5th attempt at posting this blog post from two weeks ago, which has somehow led to “failure: internal data corruption” or similar variant pop-ups between clicking on the “Publish” button on my computer screen and what should ideally happen. Thankfully, my tech-handicap has taught me (the hard way) to save and re-save multiple back-ups of things.

This is where I’ve been.

I have been trying to pull both sides of my brain into working together with this stuff, but it is difficult. I am sharing my difficulty with technology in this blog not only to excuse my lack of blogging, but because I feel that even though our students are, most likely, more tech-savvy than we are, there are moments such as the ones that I am having, that address our students daily within our classrooms–either with or without technology.

I think one of the most important things that I have realized from my experiences thus far with all of the programs, code, intricate readings saturated with tech terms, and IF frustrations, that turning on to
technology doesn’t have to be such a turn off for the tech-impaired.

In some ways, I think that I have been focusing on the wrong aspect of these tools.  I shouldn’t drown myself in code or alien data language or (insert techy jargon quip here) to locate a deeper understanding of the Digital Humanities Web Experience. It is much more than the foundations that lead the way to an entirely different hierarchical level of critical thinking.

In other ways, I am finding some different perspectives on digital humanization. When attempting to blog and comment on others’ sites after the first few blogs (which were magically problem-free), I noticed that though I had been participating by reading other blogs and formulating my own responses, I feel like I had been missing out because my work or coordinating responses were not “published.” I’m not sure how to put my finger on it, but the act of engaging through this interface requires the Lacanian “Big Other” to make it count.

While I still grapple with meaningful ways to incorporate the discussion board (as I am doing in my classes right now) and genuinely participate in them (such as this blog), I’m OK with the fact that I’m still not quite sure where these things land for me or how to articulate them within the larger theme of this class.
However, I do know that picking up a bunch of tools because they are on sale and expanding the toolbox
isn’t going to make me a better educator. But, I also realize that these tools must fit a purpose.