Ian Caldewell, a self-styled 'PC tinkerer', refurbishes PCs, and has ways of
acquiring modems, monitors, CPUs, boxes and RAM - to the point where it has
become a pastime consuming most of his leisure time. He now has streams of
people seeking repairs, advice and assistance.
"Recently, I replaced an old power supply for a couple, and, when they came
to collect, they asked whether I made house calls.
I said I could and asked what they needed."
The lady told Caldewell she'd bought a new wireless mouse, and, since it
was the last one on display, it didn't come with a box or instructions.
This content is derived from APC Magazine, November 2007. We had no
idea there were so many dumb IT trainers and students out there. The
stories just keep coming in.
COPY, COPY
David Tune of Boambee, NSW, was reminded of a particularly clever
pair of IT Diploma students who handed in a joint research
assignment, complete with the required signed statement that it was
all their original work.
Tune recalls: "Upon reading the work for grading, I was incredibly
impressed to find three pages of the document written in perfect
technical German, particularly given that the students in question
were none too articulate when I asked 'Sprechen sie Deutsch?'
End result: assignment rejected, students counselled and more care
taken when cutting and pasting to cover assignment work.
THAT'S MY LECTURE
Anyone attending an IT lecture should expect that the lecturer knows
the subject. But IT lecturers are a funny lot.
Jun Li, a programmer, recalls working in IT support at a school.
"I was told to set up a projector in one of the meeting rooms for
school staff, as there was a presentation. Having done that, I
hooked the presentation laptop to the network and tried to help one
of the speakers from the IT faculty update the laptop to IE7. I
logged off and asked her to log on with her account to try IE7.
'What is that?' she asked when the IE7 install process asked whether
phishing should be turned on. After I explained it, she told me that
she was about to present a talk on internet security."
TUTORING THE TUTOR
Neil Meyers, library assistant from Gilles Plains in SA, recalls an
incident with a part-time computer lecturer a couple of years ago.
"I work in a vocational education library, and, on night shift,
library staff are the default computer technicians/troubleshooters.
One night, this part-time lecturer came to the counter, stating that
she'd managed to get a CD-ROM disc stuck in the drive. She also said
she felt a bit foolish, because she was instructing a class in basic
computing and was unable to solve the problem in front of a room
full of students.
So I wandered over to give her assistance, pushed the drive eject
button, out popped the tray and... no disc to be seen.
Before I was able to ask out the obvious question, she piped up,
'That's the CD drive? I thought it was the other one!', pointing to
an old 5.25in floppy disc slot, which was there even though the
drives themselves had long since been decommissioned.
Someone from IT got out the disc the next day when they upended the
machine and it fell out. Then, a week later, after I gave the
lecturer her CD back, she was back within five minutes, saying, 'You
won't believe it, I've done it again!'
And this was their computing tutor? So there I am in front of her
class, shaking the heck out of the machine. So much for teaching
people to handle their computers with care!"
