Skype Gramma
“Skype Gamma!”
Skype gramma is not a word you’d expect a 2 year old to be using. That is my grandson. He wasn’t in a hurry to talk, preferred to use sign language. But once he learned how communicating to others his wants got results, he is quickly adding to his vocabulary every day.
“Milk”
“Out”
“Mommy”
“DaDa”
“Train”
“Go”
“Bike”
“Down”
Skype is not a word you’d expect a 2 year old to know, but technology is very much a part of his life. He knows when his grandma is online, there is my picture in gmail’s chat. Christmas time he had great fun using his dad’s touch screen ipod, finding pictures, songs, etc. He loved watching a video of his little cousin, better yet, watching videos of himself.
Times change. I remember when I first took a Basic programming course. I had to go to the computer lab, save my program on a ticker tape looking thing. Feed it back each time I used it. If I made any changes, I had to save and print out another one of those ticker tape things. And if it tore, back to square one. My dad just took his first retirement and was working on his master’s. The computer he used was huge, and we feed it key punch cards.
Think of key punch cards as rectanglar pieces of card stock with holes punched in it to represent one line of code. My dad paid someone to keypunch his program, drove to the college (an hour away), feed the cards to the computer. Error, typo’s and syntax errors would spit out. Those cards would have to be redone. He’d call the lady back, have her type more cards, then hour drive back to school. Repeat. Repeat. Until he got the program right.
My dad was very happy when I took a break from school, as he knew I could key punch cards. (An obsolete skill, one I’ve long forgotten.) I’d go with him, he’d work on his next program while I feed cards to the huge room size computer. Correct any errors, put the cards back in order, and refeed the computer until we got it right.
Today, my little laptop probably does as much as those room size computers. Many choices of ways to save my information. Edit on screen, save. Look where we are today, things my grandson takes for granted. Who else would say “Skype Gamma!”
Apr 19th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Skype Gramdma! How adorable, and how true. Kids know so much about technology.
Thanks for sharing,
Betty
Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I loved this post. But, I’m afraid, I’ve got much to learn from your grandson. He may only be two but he knows much more than I do. What the heck is “skype?”