I'll be writing every other Tuesday about techie topics that are near and dear to my heart as a Catholic, a mom, a Secular Franciscan, a parent of teenagers...
I never considered myself a "Techie," though I suppose the signs were all there. My younger brother got a computer when I was in high school (a Radio Shack TRS-80, and if you're old enough to know what that is, you're close to my age). I used that computer as much as he did, learning to write BASIC programs that would print my name 50 times and other useful things like that. Senior year, I suffered through a half-year of trigonometry so I could enjoy a half-year computer class. Never popular, I suddenly found myself in demand as students teamed up to work on projects and I was one of the few who knew how to make a computer print my name 50 times.
There wasn't much wiggle room in college for me to take electives, but I took Intro to BASIC as my math requirement (more making computers print my name 50 times) and found room for a one-credit course on computer applications in education.
After two years of teaching, my career path took a turn for the educational-software industry, where I was paid to break software and tell non-English-speaking programmers what I did to break it so they could make the software student-proof. (I rocked at that job.) Eventually I freelanced for that company as a software author, writing lesson "scripts."
Down the road, I learned about Internet message boards, blogging, Facebook, Twitter and more. My husband (who's been a computer programmer since 1995) has kept me in gadgets starting with my very first Palm PDA up through a Kindle, iPad and iPhone.
I enjoy using technology in a variety of ways and look forward to sharing my favorite apps, websites and more, every other Tuesday at CatholicMom.com. I also look forward to reading what the rest of the "Tech Talk" team shares, and am extremely grateful for this opportunity.
Today's feature is Digital Prayer, in which I talk about the apps you can use to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.
4 comments:
Congratulations :)
Congratulations!
I took BASIC in college, and then a more advanced programming class---whose name completely escapes me. I was the one responsible for getting my (future) husband to use the computers for his papers instead of a typewriter. So we're about the same age, aren't we?
Good luck with the new gig! It sounds fun!
It's tons of fun! Tech Talk is now a daily feature with a bunch of contributors, so you never know what topics will come up.
Sara, maybe FORTRAN or COBOL? Those were the next in line for computer students when I was in college (I'll be 47 next month).
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