LOOKING UP MIDDLE SCHOOLERS' NOSTRILS

I mentioned earlier this week that I am the school test case for our quasi-technology known as the ENO Board.  An ENO Board is a semi-interactive whiteboard that is about as user-friendly as a dead cat.  The only reason I am the test case is because I didn't realize everyone else had given up and stopped using the pieces of shit; I thought just mine was busted, so I waited fifteen weeks and finally emailed the Powers That Be and asked for a timeline to a technological breakthrough -- when, oh when, might I actually be able to USE this crappy thing?.

Bingo!  Now I'm the test case.

Supposedly the only reason that these crappy technological "advances" (that have been misplaced all through our new school) are not working is because document cameras have been installed in our rooms.  Document cameras ... that have nothing at all to do with the technology and wiring of the ENO Boards; document cameras that are merely plugged into the USB ports of our semi-usable desktop computers. 

All of our technological brilliance is supposedly being taken down by document cameras.

If this were even remotely true, then Congress should send document cameras to our military, and teams of SEALS and Army Rangers can secretly install document cameras into computers in every foreign country with questionable intentions.  Imagine that -- North Korea sidelined by a camera the size of a super tampon.  Now, that would be a headline worth reading.

Sadly, it's not true.  The document cameras have nothing to do with the shit product that is the ENO Board.  Oh, I'm sure ENO Boards are great in the business world because the egocentric boss can make colorful presentations with colorful dotted lines.  Other than that, though, at least in the world of students and tactile interactive learning, the ENO Board is the dirty, shit-filled diaper of the interactive educational world.  (Go ahead and sue me -- I don't own anything but a nine-year-old car.)


Anyway, to solve the problems of the world, my job is to play with the ENO Board every day to see if they strategies the tech team recommends are actually working.  By the fourth time I am teaching the same lesson today, I am starting to get loopy.  I am supposed to be working the document camera every day, but today I don't have anything to project.  What to do, what to do.

I activate the document camera and covertly turn it on the unaware students.  I don't have the actual projection screen on, so the students and the classroom appear on my computer screen.  My co-teacher, who is equally fascinated with this new turn of events, and I start telling the students that we can see what they're doing, though clearly we are not looking in their direction.

"Sit down, Michael. ... Don't pinch Kyle, Frankie. ... Meaghan, we're writing, not reading. ... This is not Star Wars, and you are not Obi Wan Kenobi.  Put the rulers DOWN!"

It takes the students a few moments to realize what we're doing.  After all, we are not even facing their desks.  We are staring at the computer and giggling like a couple of drunken idiots.  My co-teacher and I turn the camera on ourselves and snap some screenshots.  A couple of the students walk right up and look into the camera, trying to figure out what we are looking at.  My co-teacher and I stare at the computer screen images of the insides of the students' nostrils, their eyeballs, and their braces-lined smiles.

Finally, we turn the computer screen toward them so they can see what we are doing.  Yes, even teachers get punchy, especially during the last five minutes of the fourth class in a row on a Friday before a long weekend.  Once we get really stealthy at this, maybe we'll randomly project this scene on the ENO Board for the whole class to see.

After all, I am under STRICT ORDERS to play with the technology.  Might as well make it worth our while.