I look out over the computer lab as my students trudge through their first encounter with WordPress. So many freshman hands raised with frantic questions – the nervous looks on their faces propel me forward at a more rapid pace than I’d like. I’m determined to get to all of them.

Not everyone clicks and types and calls out for me. Two students sit quietly at their keyboards, alternately staring worriedly into space and texting under the desk. I know I’ll be approached by both of them after class; I know that they’ll ask for an extension rather than for the extra help they need in navigating the assignment. I know that they won’t complete the assignment because they don’t have computers at home and need to rely on campus labs to complete their work and that’s just not as important as getting to one of their jobs on time.

I know because I don’t assign a blog lightly; because I understand what it means to be behind the curve and in need of someone to pull you to the front of the pack just by giving you a chance.

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I used the internet for the first time when I was fifteen. My family didn’t own cell phones or a computer until I was eighteen and almost out of the house. I didn’t own my own laptop until just before I graduated college. Thinking back to the meals left on our doorstep by the church and the winter weeks spent huddled under blankets as we breathed smoke signals in the unheated living room, I feel both blessed and amazed at the ease with which I use – rely upon – so many gadgets today. I remember being in the seats occupied by my students right now: fumbling for knowledge in the dark formed by an upbringing laced with heavy discussions of mortgages, creditors, and never enough food.

There were computers in just four of the rooms in the rural elementary school I attended through sixth grade. Mrs. Heller’s first grade classroom had a large Macintosh machine – three or four times that year I played Mario Teaches Typing when I was allowed a turn; Mr. I’s music room had an Apple, as did the library – everyone gathered around those more game-savvy than I to watch round after round of Oregon Trail; and the eighth grade science lab had some sort of newer PC – used by the older kids and off limits to anyone younger. As I left the school for the last time at the end of sixth grade, stringy hair and stained jeans bought three years prior in the Washington Township Ames clearly separating me from the popular students in their cords from The Mall, I wondered about that eighth grade lab computer. I never saw it, following my own path to The Digital as my brothers and I holed up in the back room of our parents’ failing business to be homeschooled.

People talk about the feelings of isolation that homeschooling is supposed to bring on. Homeschoolers are supposedly these pale, naïve introverts who typically adhere to their (Christian) religion of choice with cult-like zealotry. So perhaps I’m one of the weird ones in a population of weird ones: homeschooling brought me from my shell, allowed me to shake off the years of bullying and social ostracizing that pushed my parents to remove their three quiet, awkward children from the public school system in the first place. It wasn’t until the years leading up to what should have brought my graduation from high school that I started to feel that isolated tug. I could barely look at the stacks of 1950s grammar exercise books and novels on the lives of the Catholic saints without growing nauseous. I was falling behind everyone else my age. And my total lack of technological skills only emphasized that fact.

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 Class is nearing its end; 20 minutes left. I drift amongst the rows of flat screen monitors catching glimpses of half-finished blogs and hastily-minimized Facebook profiles. After a few minutes of only hearing the chatter of keyboards and hushed conversations, I ask if anyone needs last-minute help before we go. Front-row hands shoot up distractedly as their owners continue to stare at screens and move mouses around desktops.

My two silent students have been fumbling with the mouses for a few minutes and talking to their neighbors. Their fellow students reach over, take control, and in a few clicks have them on their way, seemingly.

But what of after they leave the comfort of the classroom?

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Where my students and I differ is in the fact that I found digital literacy sponsors a bit earlier in life, and outside of the classroom. Janet, the reference librarian at our local branch of the county library system, was my savior. I had started working as a book-shelver in the circulation department, and the county freeholders had just allowed us to purchase six computers for public use. Feeling mortified as I noticed patrons who were my age hop on a machine and surf the still-growing waves of the web, I asked Janet to show me how to visit the webpage for one of my favorite young adult authors, Tamora Pierce – the only URL I knew, as I had seen it printed in the back of one of her books. Janet sat down beside me in the clunky reference room chairs at the desks, and showed me where to enter the address. The page slowly crept into view courtesy of the 56k modem. “Now just kinda click around with the mouse. Take a look and see how things go.” Janet got up, much to my dismay, and left me to “click around.” The next day she told me what email was, where I could sign up for an account. The next day she insisted that I let her work in peace, but came over to check on me anyway after a few minutes.

Janet’s brief guidance inspired me to explore, to not be afraid of something that I was embarrassed about not knowing. I began to push aside the anxiety that we hear adult students sometimes speak about – “I don’t want to break it” – and to see the possibilities that could come from this knowledge: After some struggle, I began to help make flyers and posters to display around the small library building, and to make activity sheets for our volunteers to use with the smaller children at Tuesday morning Storytime. But more life changing than the actual skills I learned under Janet’s tutelage was my discovery of online message boards.

I had fallen in love with the genres of fantasy and sci-fi, and trolled websites for information about Peter Jackson’s upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy as though I were researching it for an academic publication. Participating on Tolkien-fan message boards, I made some of the closest friends of my adolescent years – friends I never met in person, and who only knew me as I knew them: through fantasy-inspired avatars and usernames. I only learned their real names recently through current social networking sites; who knew that I’d had friends across the globe for years – Tennessee, Seattle, Wales, Holland, New Zealand, Wisconsin, South Africa… These connections brought friendship to someone who felt alone not because of her distance from public education, but rather because of a feeling that she was behind the curve. Taking part in these message board conversations, I was talking to people; I was hearing about news and events of which I was otherwise ignorant; due to the not-so-user-friendly platforms in which the forums were hosted, I was learning more technical terminology than I could have hoped for. I even learned to code HTML a bit.

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That all seems so strange to think about now.

Now I wake up in the morning with the irritating vibrating chirp of the alarm clock app on my smart phone buzzing in my ear. I work on a laptop during my long commute into the city, only pausing to check for text messages on my phone and to glance out the smudgy windows at the landscape as it moves from farm fields to sub/urban sprawl. I use Google Maps – on my phone, of course – to navigate the city streets, still intimidating to this country gal. I refer to my professional Online Presence and tend it like a garden. I rely on knowledge obtained through some psychic form of osmosis from my husband, the Network Administrator, to get my students and I out of IT jams rather than calling the Helpdesk of wherever I happen to be. I ping. I scan. I uninstall. I ip_config. I tweet. I link. I Skype. I Gchat.

But mostly I use as many digital tools as I can in my classroom. Because I was lucky to have had digital literacy sponsors to reconnect me when I felt disconnected from my peer groups, to encourage me to move beyond anxious feelings into a position of confident knowledge. I recognize those figures, those situations as such. And that is where I fear my path veers from my students’. That is what I hope to change.

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The clock hits 10:40; class is over. A bell rings in everyone’s heads and even as I shout out last-minute directions and reminders, I’ve sent all 27 once-staring/working heads out into the world to finish their projects independently.

I begin to gather up my coffee cup, notes, and dry eraser markers. “Um, professor?”

 The two silent students stand before me, eyes downcast, shuffling towards the door even as they ask for that extension.