An interesting thing happened in one of my classes this week: the TA's laptop refused to communicate with the projector. It was a disaster.
At the advanced age of 33, I've had the "pleasure" of experiencing varying levels of technology in the classroom - not only as a student, but as a sign language interpreter, paraprofessional, and even teacher. What really strikes me is how much things have changed since I was a kid. I'll try to avoid the five-miles-through-snow-uphill-both-ways speech, but it does amuse me sometimes to remember actual chalkboards with actual chalk; overhead projectors that hummed like a small jet engine; and those A/V nightmares, the rolling television/VCR combo that stood about six feet high and constantly threated you with crushing death (via those how-to-maneuver stickers). And the projectors of my day were loud, cumbersome, utilizing actual film that had to be threaded through the machine carefully from one reel to another.
The really interesting thing is that the technology hasn't really changed the methods of teaching much. We watch films in class, but now we do it on a DVD connected to an LCD projector hanging from the ceiling instead of on the fossil projectors that have to be carefully placed in the middle of the room (scattering desks before it) and focused by hand. We take notes from PDFs or PowerPoints or Word documents projected on our screen instead of from the teacher's own writings on the board or the transparencies on the overhead projector. Maps are brought up on Google instead of pulled down from rolls above the board.
When it comes down to it, not that much has really changed. It's all just a little shinier, fancier, suffused with aura.
In case you were on the edge of your seat wondering what happened in my class, the laptop was switched out for another which played nice with the projector. It took as much tinkering and muttered curses as it did when the mammoth projector of my youth broke down.
