Technology and Communication

Yesterday, I had a conversation class for which the topic was Technology and Communication.  It is not my favorite class to do because it is hard to get a flowing discussion from the topic.  I usually find myself working through different questions like a machine gun.  One question after another with no transition.  At the end of the class yesterday, I felt the same way I do any other time I have a dud class: embarrassed and sheepish.

But in the class yesterday, I did at least have a student tell me something I didn't know or never given thought to.  That is the best I can often hope for if the students tell me something I didn't know about China and maybe I can tell them something they didn't know.  I asked a question about how technology and communication had changed in their life times.  I had a student, who was in his late twenties, tell me how when he was young, he and his mother had to use the telegraph to send a message to his father who was working out of town.   They had no telephone in their house and there might have been one telephone in the town in which they lived.