Episode: 645
Title: HPR0645: The Dinosaur's Dilemma
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0645/hpr0645.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:20:23

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Greetings, HPR fans. This is Kurbuntu.
I am always interested in seeing how people learn, especially people who come from a non-technical background,
how they cope with and make the transition into the digital age and improve their computer-based skills.
And over the last year, I've seen a friend go through a very interesting and in some ways,
traumatic transition from a non-geek to, well, I wouldn't call her a geek yet, but she is moving in that direction.
We're starting off with the first, in a series of interviews with a friend of mine,
who goes by the name of Bailey Juran. Is it Juran?
I call it Juran.
Oh, okay. Bailey Juran.
And I asked Bailey to give this first episode a title.
And Bailey, what was the title that you decided to give it?
The dinosaurs dilemma.
The dinosaurs dilemma. All right.
And the reason for that title will be clear in just a minute.
I will share briefly how I know Bailey.
Our shared history is that I used to pastor in upstate New York.
This was mercy. It was a long time ago.
I think we moved from there 20, a little over 20 years ago.
I am a dinosaur.
Well, I'm older than you are, so just watch it.
In any event, Bailey attended my church.
She became one of our dear friends.
And she, we still correspond.
And Bailey has decided to, well, why don't you explain how it is that we're here.
Now, so you spoke up one morning and said, I'm going to become a geek.
Yeah, I'm going to become a geek.
More or less.
I guess, well, there were, you know, two.
Actually, you might say three things that influenced my decision to take this direction in my life.
Well, let's set the stage and let people know.
Bailey has been a special education teacher in a major school district in upstate New York.
She doesn't go by the name of Bailey professionally.
And she has both her bachelor's degree and her bachelor's degree.
So not as though she lacks education or intelligence.
So I just want to set that out as a, as a reference point.
Okay.
Now, now take it from there.
Well, okay.
I, like you say, I was teaching.
And of course, everyone knows, I think, about a lot of the changes that have taken place in education,
which for me as a teacher in my particular area was more of a frustration.
I didn't, I didn't really think that a lot of these changes were actually helping students.
They were more detrimental, I think, to what was happening in the classroom.
So there was that issue, you know, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my job.
And I saw this book.
I can't remember how I saw it.
The name of the book.
I also included it here is what was the name of it?
Yeah.
Making money, teaching online.
And I thought, oh, that would be kind of kind of interesting.
You know, and oh, it says, oh, you can earn a six figure salary.
It was part of the title.
And I thought, hey, I'd be happy with a five figure salary.
So long as the first digit was five or above.
By the way, we'll have this title and the authors in our show notes.
The book is making money, teaching online, colon, how to land your first academic job,
build credibility, and earn a six figure salary by Danielle Bab and Jim Mirabella.
Yes.
So anyway, I saw that book and I kind of, you know, looked at that.
I was still, you know, teaching in the school district.
Oh, and actually, I guess I have a lot of reasons.
You know, living out here in Central New York, one of the fun things that we have is snow.
As a matter of fact, this, this past December was absolutely unbearable.
We've had 72 inches worth of snow before, I mean, just, you know,
from December 1st to the middle of December when we had 72 inches of snow.
That's a lot of snow.
72 inches.
That's as tall as I am.
72 inches.
Well, that's, that's nearly for those of you on the, on the metric system.
That's moving towards two meters of snow.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
It's, um, yeah, well, it's over, uh, yeah, it's about six feet, almost six feet of snow.
It is exactly six feet.
So not quite two meters, yeah.
Oh, yeah, I guess it is.
I guess it is.
I guess you work.
You weren't a math teacher then I take it.
You know, all of a sudden it was like, no, it is exactly.
And it was like, oh, oh, yeah, it is.
I had to do the math in my ad, you know.
But anyway, so there's that and thinking, oh, working from home.
I kind of like that idea.
Don't have to go out, shovel the snow.
I'll just stay inside, order pizza, you know.
Not have to deal with the, the snow at all.
Now wait, with this ordering pizza thing, I know you haven't been fully certified as a geek yet.
But that's a very geeky diet.
Is it just something that you learned in school or?
No, actually, it's, I like pizza.
Oh, all right.
Well, see, it could be that you're genetically inclined towards geekiness.
Towards geekiness.
Yeah, just because of your dietary preferences.
But okay, continue.
Well, okay.
So there was that book.
There was, you know, increasingly job dissatisfaction.
And then I was watching the news one evening and they mentioned second life.
And second life for anybody who does not know is a virtual environment.
If you've played World of Warcraft, you kind of know you have a little avatar and they interact with other people in the game.
Well, second life isn't exactly a game, but it is a virtual environment.
And within second life, I saw a lot of possibility for actual teaching within that environment.
And come to find out there is a organization in there that is teaching English as a second language in there.
Yes, Ellen.
That's your specialty.
Is that right?
Yes.
You know, I thought, wow, I mean, I could actually do this.
You know, I could, I could teach in that environment.
And, you know, so they kind of got me to thinking, you know, about computers and possibility of actually using this device to do something that I've been accustomed to doing in a classroom face to face.
And so I ended up going to the local community college and taking classes there.
And I took a leave of absence from my job and I'm pursuing more knowledge primarily.
I mean, I don't really necessarily feel I needed degree, but I am learning more about primarily web site design and development.
But you in along the way, it's been more than just HTML and CSS.
You've been, you've been learning about databases, you've been learning about basic server operations.
Yes.
And programming and.
Well, that's right.
You had to struggle through a semester of C plus, wasn't it?
Yes, C plus plus.
Yeah, all that was fun.
But now the interesting thing was I have a friend in second life who is a computer programmer and he loves programming.
And he's, he's there in second life.
I wish I had gotten him earlier in the semester because he was actually helping me tutoring me within second life.
All right.
Now this, we're dealing with the dinosaurs dilemma.
And what was it that made you decide that you really, besides job dissatisfaction, why should you personally take a leave of absence, take a real hit to your personal income, go back to school full time and learn all this stuff?
What's in it for you personally? And maybe you could start off with what level were you at in terms of a computer user?
Okay.
Well, I thought that I knew a lot more than I actually did.
I think most people, you know, if you can maneuver your way through Microsoft Office that somehow that makes you computer savvy.
I really, I think a lot of people feel that way in a friend who's, who said to me, oh yeah, you should go into that computer stuff.
You already know all kinds of stuff about computers.
And you know, I stupidly let myself believe that.
Just as a side here, something you're doing is knocking the microphone or it sounds like you are.
Oh.
You're hitting a clicking something that keeps coming through.
How's that?
Does that seem to be any better?
I don't hear it now.
So you knew how to highlight, copy and paste in the eyes of in the eyes of some of your contemporaries that meant that you.
Yeah.
We're a computer with.
Okay. Well, yeah.
I mean, well, because I used the computer to create like, you know, books and things with my students.
And, you know, I was able to add pictures to their documents and, you know, I could do some fun things with it.
But there was only using a single application wasn't really knowing anything about the computer.
It was just basic word processing, which is not that.
Oh, and I also had a friend in, in second life, another friend who would talk to me about computer stuff.
And I think I became, you know, just interested in how the computer can be used educationally.
And it was also thinking about, well, what am I going to do when I get out of, out of teaching in a brick and mortar building?
I, I'm going to still need to work.
I need an income.
And so that's why I decided to go back to school because I knew I didn't, well, you know, as I told you, I didn't really know what I didn't know.
Well, as it turns out, there's a lot that I don't know.
And that's kind of the beauty of having an education or getting an education in this area is, wow, there is a lot, a lot to learn.
Really, I'm almost overwhelmed every time I think about the vastness of it.
When I compared to what I was learning 20 years ago as an undergraduate, and I took a computer course.
And when you took computer courses back then, I had a friend who was, you know, a couple of friends who were in the computer program.
And it was computer science, and that was it.
And there was no computer information systems.
There was no health information systems or using the computer for business applications.
And now it's over health applications. And it's this.
And it's, there's like these specialized fields and there's website design and development and there's, there's, you know, programming and there's all these different areas, all of a sudden.
And it just used to be one.
And now it's not.
You know, something in one area doesn't make you able to go in some other computer area, like going from programming to website design and development.
You don't necessarily make that transition without additional training.
So once, once you jumped into this program, where were you? Did you feel like, oh, yeah, I'm, I'm right, I'm right in the groove here.
Or did you feel like you were completely lost or, oh, definitely completely lost.
When I took the first class that I ever, ever had, I go into the classroom and there was a bunch of geeky guys there who had been laid off from their jobs.
And they, they needed a degree, but see, they already had all this knowledge. They just didn't have a degree.
So they were, they're talking to the professor and they're going back and forth and carrying on a conversation.
And I knew absolutely nothing of what they were talking about, nothing.
Now what class was this just out of curiosity?
This was actually the, the foundations of the internet.
Foundations of the internet. This was where I was going to learn HTML and CSS.
And guessgating style sheets for those who would see it.
Yes. And I, I mean, I can't even relate to you what their conversation was about because I have no idea.
I mean, you have to know what somebody's talking about in order to be able to report back what, what they were saying.
As I, as I've said to other people, you know, the words I understood were things like va and was.
I mean, that, that was pretty much it. And anything in between those, I had no idea.
So there's a bit of irony here. You as an English, as a second language teacher, have dealt for years with students who come in with various other tongues as their, as their native language.
And you've had to help them through to some sort of competence and communication skills in English.
And yet you then took on their role as it were in the, in this new world of geeky dumb.
And you hardly understood it. And it was going on in the classroom.
No, no, that's, it's a very, very apt. It's very, very much the same kind of experience.
Very much so.
And I don't know if you can hear my bird, but now he's singing.
Well, it's okay. You know, it seems like every HPR podcast has a bit of music tacked on to the end.
So we'll just leave the cocktail music in the background and not have a trailer at the end just before.
Well, I have to lay a casing. No, that he's got to continue singing until I'm done.
If we're, if we're not careful, that could be the, you know, the best thing about the podcast, the people, the burn back on, but not us.
Oh, no.
But anyway, I, no, I didn't, I really, I truly did not understand it.
And I think that, that's the, the key in any, any learning is that you start out with basics of, you know, you have to understand certain, you know, basic things before you can understand.
And other concepts.
And in education, we call that background knowledge.
You have background knowledge to enable you to learn new things.
You know, it's very difficult to learn algebra if you haven't figured out how to do addition and subtraction, you know, understanding how numbers work.
Or just simply, what does that equal sign actually mean?
Unless you get some of these basic concepts, there's no way that you can, can do higher level math and very, very much the same thing with my experience.
So I'm coming into this, this setting without this background knowledge with no background knowledge whatsoever.
I mean, really very little other than that you can maneuver around in Microsoft Word and work with windows environment.
I don't know, I mean, it's like, when I realize how little I actually know or knew then, I don't really feel like I've made that much, much progress.
I mean, I know a heck of a lot more and I know that there's a lot I don't know. It's probably the biggest thing I've learned.
Sometimes like the old student lament, at least it was a lament in my days back in, well, what I called my last podcast, the place to scene era.
There was a little ditty where we said, the more you study, the more you know, the more you know, the more you know, you don't know.
The more you know, you don't know, the less you know, so why study?
Yeah, but we've seen the dinosaur kind of wander out of the out of the jungle.
Yeah, the tar pit.
And well, while others are getting stuck in the tar pit, deciding that you wanted to evolve.
And so in our next podcast, which we'll tentatively call hitting the wall of reality, we'll talk about your actual experience in the classroom
and the challenges you had jumping into these various areas and trying to wrestle them into some sort of comprehension so that you could work with them.
Now, just before we sign off, do you want to plug your website?
Oh, yes, sure.
No, at least she's learned enough to create a website.
So she's making good progress.
Yeah, well, I'm not saying it's pretty, but it's there.
It's called teacupcoffeehouse.com.
Okay, teacupcoffeehouse, just like it sounds, we'll put that in the show notes, dot com.
And what are you doing there on the site just real briefly?
Okay, well, right now, the plan is to just get small business because I figured that's the direction that I need to go in is in the realm of making this a business.
I don't know about actually being a geeky person, being hired in that, right?
But if I can make this a business where I can actually make money, that would be good.
I think my education as it progresses will help me to make that site much more functional.
So it will be more attractive to prospective people who will pay me to have their information on my site.
Well, all right, we'll leave it at that.
And perhaps next week we'll get together and do our next segment, which, as I said, we'll tentatively call hitting the wall of reality.
Really, thanks for joining me, and thank you, HPR listeners.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
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