Sunday, June 27, 2010

Pretentious

I mentioned in my first post, that this wouldn't be about my work as a technology educator. Still, it is a large part of what I am and this is really more just about people anyway. I digress.

I'm attending ISTE 2010 in Denver this week. Things here are just getting underway and I've only just registered, but already I have seen incredible evidence of the digital divide. I'm currently listening to a guy from Baltimore who dresses the part (emo glasses, pac man tee-shirt) discussing with a group of boomers how to use Twitter. Currently he can't get the network to work. This is incredible people-watching. At the heart of the problem here...and believe me, there is a problem...is his lack of respect for the people he's talking to. He really thinks they're stupid. Now if you sat him down, he'd no doubt deny it; but in dark places he doesn't like to talk about, he loathes these people. See that's only half of the problem. They hate him too. On the face of it, they are interested, have checked their egos at the door, and are ready to learn. Except that they haven't done that.

Then again...maybe they have.

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