I don’t care who is using a computer or when, where, or how it is being used, at some point, something is probably going to go wrong. A page might be deleted from the website you have been working on. An app is shut down or just disappears altogether. Maybe the problems are with you own machine: the battery dies, the internet quits working, or (hopefully I don’t jinx anyone here) the hard drive might crash. Computers can be a pain!
As much as teaching students how to work with computers, they also need to be taught that patience goes a long way in accomplishing a task especially on these wonderful machines.
Today after school, I had a student come to me with a red face. She was frustrated because the app she was using kept deleting her work. She told me that she was ready to just hand write the assignment and be done with the “stupid computer.” We sat down and looked at what was going on. Honestly, we never did figure out why her work disappeared, but we did finally get it to work. We just had to be patient.
Giving up never gets anyone anywhere, and this goes for those pesky web apps and the computers that they are on. We all just need to be patient. When something goes wrong, take a deep breath, find something else to do for a little bit, and tackle the problem again.
