The Computer Ate My Homework

This is the age of technology and my students would be lost without their gadgets. Because they’re so used to typeface, today’s students have a difficult time reading cursive handwriting. Even teachers can’t imagine accepting a pile of hand-written final papers, though they probably can remember handing in their own, carefully copied over essays.

Even though I was born prior to the home computer; even though my elementary school had a single computer on a big cart that they pushed from room to room, giving each student half a minute to meander a pointless maze with a black and white “bunny” (just an oddly shaped cursor); even though I typed all my high school essays, and half my college papers, on a Smith Corona, seeing only four lines at a time; despite all of my handicaps, I am able to perform many different technological feats that are, apparently, marvels to my students.

- I can word process.
- I can save a file.
- I can backup a file.
- I can change the ink in my printer.
- I can add paper to my printer.
- I can silence my cell phone.
- I can use email.
- I can use and reload a stapler.
- And I can still remember how to program a VIC-20 in BASIC to fill a screen with the word “Hello!”

Why, then, are my students, who probably had personal computers in their cribs, technological morons?

Because their dogs ate their homework.


10 print “Hello!”;
20 goto 10