No Mouse

I used to have a MySpace account.  I started my blog there.  But after I had a few too many technical difficulties, I moved the blog here.  I have since closed the MySpace account.  I hate to lose all of my blogs from that time, so from time to time I'm going to repost them here. 

I'm kind of going through the old posts randomly.  This one was originally posted on May 10, 2007. 

Yesterday they were testing.  We had two large blocks of time in which they were to take these state-mandated tests.  The first block everything went fine.  But we were done for the second block, so they had to sit in the room for two hours while the rest of the campus finished up their testing. 

There were only two computers in the room.  One was missing its mouse.

They had work to do.  It was work that would have gotten them ahead.  But this is the continuation high school, and they don't do work to get ahead.  They don't do work that they feel is too hard.  And even though they had been warned that they would have two hours to sit with nothing to do, most of them did not bring in things to keep themselves occupied (two students showed up with books which was more than I thought would). 

So, they all wanted to use the computers.  The computer with the mouse went first.  But there was this other computer that worked, and they had nothing to do.  First they went in search of a mouse to attach.

Unfortunately, all the mouses (mice?  meeces?) were chained to the desks and computers.  So, that meant that they would have to try to use the computer without a mouse.  Necessity is the mother of invention.

First one got on the computer.  He said that all you had to do was tab around the screen.  Well, that's true and all, but if these kids are unwilling to do actual work, how patient do you think they were with this computer?  One would try, then give up, then another would pick up in his place.  Finally they got to MySpace (it's blocked on school computers, but they all know ways around this), and so one would log on, check his messages, log off, and then another would repeat the process. 

That was a very long two hours.