‘Still at school’, that’s me, leaving secondary school in 1970 to attend Auckland Secondary Teachers’ College for three years where I trained as a Commercial teacher – typewriting, commercial practice and shorthand. Now 40 years later I still hang out at a local school here on the Coromandel on a part-timer, teaching ICT skills to special needs students and supporting the local cluster of schools with virtual e-learning. I have had an interesting 40 years as ICT technology has changed in our schools and lives. Producing copies using the banda and the gazzetta for our students, the good old manual typewriter, how ever did we manage to push those keys down? From the chalk dust of blackboards to whiteboards and interwrite boards. Computers came into my life 20 years again when my principal at the time informed me that the typewriters had gone over the holidays and I was to teach with computers (the ones the science department no longer wanted, not a mouse insight). Today I consider myself a ‘nana geek’, I have this never ending appetite to be at my computer, to communicate through my computer and to learn something new everyday.
