instructional technology anyone?

It's been hitting me hard this term just how much instruction technology (and support thereof) has changed in the four point five years I've been teaching.

This is probably because to some extent I'm using old examples, giving older lectures, and I'm suddenly struck by how I had to do this the last time I did it. The last time I brought in examples for rhetorical analysis I did so on an overhead. I had a magazine cover I dragged into class. I had to burn files to a CD and then throw them into my own laptop hooked up to a cart with a projector on it (because the laptop on the cart usually didn't like me very much, for whatever reason).

My students used to write reading responses and journal entries both in class at home. Now we do that on the course blog.

Instead of burning stuff to a CD I put it on a USB key around my neck. I'd just shove the stuff in Content Collection on Blackboard, or in a hidden file on my website, but to be honest, I don't really trust that the internet in my classroom will work--it's been hinky on Monday mornings. I really need to kick the ass of whomever is futzing with it on Saturdays or Fridays and TURNING OFF THE ROUTER. *growl*

But that too is a big change. My students all have laptops available at one school (in the classroom or their own) that are locked up in the back. In the other, I have a multimedia workstation that I present from, and all my students have a computer in front of them all the time. This is a big advance from always having to check out a computer lab and sharing the space with other users...

Yet, I find myself relying on the technology less and less. Sure I study "Computers and Writing" officially, but I'm the sap who thinks that a printed off spreadsheet would be better used to schedule people in the Writing Center than a hand built database in Access (alright, so it's mostly because Access doesn't have a built in calender feature, but still). I'm mostly right too--it's not always necessary. Nice, but not necessary.

Yet, if this is how many little things have changed in four years, I find myself wondering about the next twenty. What little things will have made teaching different in a few months? years?