a story (part 1)

As the leader of a teaching practicum at Purdue University during the fall of 2001, I taught advanced graduate instructors how to teach writing in wired computer classrooms. Duangchay (not his real name) was not enrolled in my class. That did not, however, stop him from charging into my wired computer classroom during a class meeting.

I sat on the aisle, toward the back that day. My student, Thu (not her real name), was giving a presentation. Thu was an experienced graduate instructor who, while new to teaching writing in a classroom with desktop computers, was certainly not new to teaching writing. She had logged in at the instructor’s station so that she could project her materials onto the screen at the front of the room. This station was marked in that it was the only station vested with a scanner and an LCD projector, and it was the only one facing the back wall. About 10 minutes into Thu’s presentation, Duangchay entered the room, walked past Thu without acknowledging her, walked down the center aisle (about 15 feet), and then began to log on to a desktop computer across the aisle from me. Thu was too gracious (and perhaps too surprised) to say anything. I was not.

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