Sometimes Vintage Works Best

There's something almost magical about watching a Polaroid picture materialize before your eyes. It forces you to slow down. Each image takes time and costs money.  A microscope can do more and see more and show more than a magnifying glass. However, that can be a part of the problem. An iTunes account means that each song is instantly accessible at all times. A record, however, will force a person to slow down and listen to an album. That's the thing about "vintage" technology.  There's something about the minimalism, about being forced to slow down, about the limitations of "old" tech that makes it valuable. When technology does less of the work for us, it can sometimes mean that we do more of the thinking ourselves. When I taught science, I had kids observing critters in order to think about adaptations. Half of the class sketched pictures of what they saw. The other half took pictures. Afterwards, they annotated it, using words and arrows to make sense out of the adaptations. Students using the photographs had multiple views, tons of fonts, and specialty arrows for annotations. The digital versions looked nicer. However, the thinking and the conclusions were better with the students who sketched it out by hand. The limitations and the lack of options forced the students with the paper and pencils to create a visual representation of what they observed. They couldn't capture it with a click. I'm sure that this isn't a scientific research activity. However, it's just my observation that the analysis and the observation and the attention paid on the actual organisms that we had were better when the high-tech option wasn't available. This is why I think slide rules are actually useful. It's why I believe that chart paper still has a place in a one-to-one classroom. It's why each kid should have a tablet. A real one. The kind that will eventually run out of paper. It's why I like individual white boards and I'm still a fan of mind maps drawn out on legal-sized paper, with colored pencils. Sometimes the limitations are exactly what we need to free up our minds to do the work.