Flow: One Painting, Eight Times

One painting, eight ways.

Since we moved to Alameda last fall, a bike ride out to Alameda Point (and the decommissioned Naval Base) is part of my regular routine. Roughly a 7-mile round trip ride, it’s good exercise and I enjoy the strange isolation of the abandoned base, the wide open spaces, and the breathtaking views of San Francisco. Riding out there this weekend I was struck by the fact that every time I go, I see something previously unnoticed…an unusual building, a road option, a strangely worded sign, or a half buried railway track. This weekend it was the airport control tower, squatting at the western end of the base. How had I missed seeing that before?

My spurious powers of observation got me thinking about the value of repetition.  How much easier it is to find your way around a place that you’ve been to before.  How much more you notice on a subsequent visit. How much better a recipe turns out the second or third time its made.  How much more help you can be to someone new to a task when you yourself have done it before. And how much more I notice each time I visit Alameda Point.

Repetition is what I’m talking about here. Not redundancy. It’s pretty tough to stand up for needless duplication, boring drills, or mind-numbing recurrences.

Repetition, not redundancy.

The lesson took on a new dimension with a small water-color painting of a plucked flower, pictured at the top of this post. I sketched, then painted it. Unhappy with the result, I decided to try it again.  Better.  Maybe a third time?  Much better. Ok, so maybe I took the idea too far by trying the same painting eight times, but the resulting output was intriguing. It wasn’t a steady improvement where the eighth painting turned was the best of the bunch. Rather, some elements improved steadily – color blending, perspective on the leaves – while others (the sketched arch of the plant) were best in the earliest iterations.

It wasn’t the productivity or consistency sought in the automation of a process (such as the value of an assembly line) but there was a state of flow to the endeavor. My brain was fully engaged with the task and certain parts of it became easier and easier to do because I didn’t have to think about them too much.

Perhaps the most interesting part to me was the experience of inhabiting the process – dwelling there for more time than I normally would have devoted to it – which served up the opportunity to observe a range of possible outcomes.  There was comfort, even pleasure, in the recreation and insight to be gained.

“That reminds me of a story…”

Don’t you always perk up when you hear that?

We are storytelling creatures.  Not only do we love telling stories, but we love to hear them too.  When I think of favorite storytelling moments in my life here’s what I remember…

Gary Brusca.  My favorite teacher in college. He was a terrific scientist and a wonderful educator but it was only much later in life that I realized those skills  of his were linked to his storytelling talents.  It was like he couldn’t help himself in lecture, he would fall into stories about the creatures and environments under study.  My notes, like his lectures, were spiced with anecdotes, sketches, and beginning, middle and end markers.

Bathtime. When our two boys were little, they took baths together and evening bath time became the perfect venue for storytelling. I would perch next to them on the closed toilet and launch into the latest exploits of two sisters – Nita and Rita.  Those two girls got into so much trouble – skinned knees, crazy adventures, intense arguments and wild exploits.  Funnily enough, Nita and Rita’s adventures ran on a parallel track to the adventures of the two bath boys. It became this wonderful way to go over their day, put it all in perspective, and tell each other it was alright.  How many nights the bath water grew cold while we sat there together.

Wind in the Willows

Wind in the Willows. My Dad, reading Wind in Willows (by Kenneth Grahame) to me, long before I was probably old enough to really follow the meandering details of life on the river….Ratty, Mr. Toad, and Badger.  I loved them all and would beg him to keep reading.

What Else am I Learning?

Think on this a minute.  Can you come up with a scenario where the skills you acquired learning one thing, helped you do another?  For instance, did learning how to ride a bike help you learn how to ski?  Did learning how to tie your shoes help you to learn how to braid your hair?

This week I watched this happen with two people learning to work with social media and virtual worlds.  In one case, the person had previously worked with Blackboard Elluminate (running regular webinars).  I went into the virtual world of Second Life with her and she took to it like a duck to water.  All that pesky troubleshooting around sound issues in Second Life?  Not a problem.  She had the whole “triage” problem solving method down cold.  As in….first check your computer volume (on mute?), then your headset (plugged in the right way?), then your computer sound preferences (set to the right thing?), then SL preferences….and so on.  I didn’t have to explain a thing.  You wouldn’t think that a webinar platform like Elluminate and a 3D virtual world like Second Life would have all that much in common!

In another instance it was someone learning how to use Pixton. She had never used the comic creation tool before but because she was a photographer, she quickly grasped the notion of frames and layout.  In addition to that, Pixton has these somewhat confusing case-sensitive tool buttons where you only see the tool buttons that relate to what you are doing. In other words, you see a different set of buttons if you’ve clicked on a character than if you clicked on a speech bubble. Many people get muddled with these.  But not in this case.  As we worked further, it became clear that this person was transferring an understanding of case-sensitive tools that she earned using Photoshop.

Fascinating. In addition to the pleasure in seeing media skills transfer from one situation/tool to another, there’s another, harder to describe, benefit that seems to come along for the ride. I observed that my friend in the first scenario was just more patient, more resilient with the Second Life technical issues because she’s been there before.  She’d seen similar technical problems through to a positive conclusion, and that gave her the confidence to press on.  She possessed the certain knowledge that, eventually, she’d figure it out.

When I’m working with learners on new skills or concepts, all too often they just seem to give up – abandon ship – before they get to the fun part. Perhaps one way to diffuse this tendency is to reassure them – online tool use and technical problem solving are a cumulative things.  The more you do, the more you can do.

Ten Tools Challenge: Prezi (Tool #2)

“I accept your challenge!”

In January, I decided to take up Jane Hart’s Ten Tools Challenge.  I’ve already blogged about my Tool #1, Explain Everything, and here is my tool #2 (ok, ok I’m a bit behind schedule):  Prezi.

As many of you know, Prezi is a zooming presentation tool – an alternative to PowerPoint and Keynote.  It lives online and, with a free account, you can create your own Prezis that also live online (or you can download them to your desktop).  Here’s a good example of a well crafted prezi, featured on the Prezi site, to give you a feel for what’s possible.

While I’ve used Prezi in the past, I’ve just recently surfaced from a Prezi-deep-dive –  five presentations (on wildly different topics) in one month.  So it seems like a good time to reflect on its strengths and weaknesses.

First, a little about how Prezi works.  Unlike Keynote and PowerPoint, where the navigational metaphor is a series of index cards or slides to progress through one to the next to the next, a Prezi presentation exists on a large (endless) canvas.  You plop content (text, images, video) down on the canvas in any order and then create a pathway through your content.

So here’s a sample from a recently built Prezi::

Part of a Prezi, showing various content pieces in a frame.

The blue circle is a “frame” and the little content bits and bobs within the blue circle are all related to the topic of that particular frame. Once you upload your content into the frame, you then decide in what order to display them. Here’s that same frame of content, with the “pathway” turned on.

Same Prezi frame, with the editing path turned on.

With that as backdrop, here’s what I think are the advantages of using Prezi:

Easy modification. Whenever I am asked to give a talk, I usually reconfigure the content to reflect the interests of the group. Sometimes I add new information, cut back on less relevant things, or change the order to accommodate schedules. By having all of my content on one canvas, I can easily change the pathway and modify for a new audience. All the content is still there (on the canvas) but may not be included in this particular pathway.

Focused attention. The zooming capability makes it possible to focus the viewers’ attention and indicate emphasis in a dynamic, visual way.  This is particularly useful when you want to emphasize forest-to-trees relationships.

Visual context. If used well, Prezi can help you do a better job of using physical space to assist your audience and help them remember how the parts of your talk relate to each other.

Easy importing.  You can import a PowerPoint slide deck to Prezi.  While the import function works well, you have to massage the slides to take advantage of the zooming and other features.  Keep in mind that animation effects you created in PPT, won’t survive the import.

Easily displayed and shared online.  Since Prezi is an online tool, it is easy to neatly (without ads or distractions) embed it, display it, or share a link. Of course, you can use SlideShare or Speaker Deck to do that with PPT and Keynote files.  Oh, there’s a Prezi iPad app too.

Helpful tutorials. Prezi’s done a very good job with video tutorials and masterful cheat sheets on their website.  Nicely done.

And now the disadvantages:

It’s a bit gimmicky.  If you want to be precise about it, Prezi is still a linear presentation tool.  Afterall, you are just proceeding along nodes on a linear path. Those that complain about death-by-PowerPoint could still complain about death-by-Prezi.  But I do feel that using this tool urges me on to be more visual in my thinking.

You don’t own it. Because your presentation lives online, it’s got all the advantages and disadvantages of a cloud-based existence.  Namely, you can access it from any where and easily share it.  But, you could also loose it (Prezi could go belly up).

Size limitations. Prezi works on a Freemium model. The free public version gives you 100MB of storage space (enough for 4 or 5 Prezis).  To get 500MB of storage space you have to pay $59/year.  (2GB for $159/year).  I found the limits of my free allotment when I created a Prezi that included four short video segments.

Motion Sickness.  Some people complain that swooping Prezi’s give them a headache or make them feel slightly nauseous.  As one prone to motion sickness myself, I’m always careful to limit the amount of swooping and turning. Using frames, being judicious about effects, and strategically positioning your content (shortening the path points) makes this easy to control.

As you can see, advantages and disadvantages.  I would say that when I sit down to create a PPT or Keynote “deck”, I always just open the application and start plunking things down.  With Prezi, my first instinct is to create a storyboard, so that I can understand the whole of what I’m trying to accomplish before I get into the trap of bulleted-list thinking…and that just feels like a good thing.

Hopi Hoekstra: Darwin to DNA

Hopi Hoekstra

This last weekend marked the 10th anniversary of the Biology Leadership Conference.  One hundred and two biology educators gathered from all over the U.S., Canada (plus one attendee from Bangladesh!) for the three-day meeting in Tucson, Arizona.  The conference keynote address was given by Hopi Hoekstra, Professor of Zoology and Curator of Mammals at Harvard University. Dr. Hoekstra’s lab studies evolutionary genetics, examining the genetic basis of fitness-related traits and what can genes tell us about the evolutionary process.

Dr. Hoekstra, telling a good connection story.

She started her talk with one of those amazing connection stories about Charles Darwin. Her story connected Walter Drawbridge Crick (grandfather of Francis Crick), a shoemaker (and amateur naturalist) who, many years ago, sent Darwin a sample of a cockle, clamped to the leg of a terrestrial beetle, which led to an article that Darwin published in Nature over 100 years ago.  A lovely story to demonstrate remarkable connections, overlaid on the shared evolutionary history of all organisms.

25 February 2011 Science Cover

The Hoekstra lab studies different populations of wild mice (genus Peromyscus, commonly known as deer mice) to uncover the genetic and developmental mechanisms underlying variation in cryptic coloration patterns and behavior.  Though these mice superficially resemble the common house mouse, Peromyscus have larger eyes and often have two-tone coloring with a darker dorsal color and a lighter belly color.

Wild mice are the most abundant mammals in North American.  Since they are found in every habitat type, there are many local adaptation to investigate.  Not only that, since these mice have been studied for so long by natural historians, there is a tremendous body of work documenting their behavior, physiology and morphology.  As a result, these ping-pong ball-sized  mice are turning out to be a vital, emerging model system for the study of evolution and genetics.  In fact, Hoekstra explains that she thinks of mice as the Drosophila of North American mammology.

The fascinating thing about Dr. Hoekstra’s research is that it is always a three-part story: environment, phenotype, and genotype.  It’s inspiring to hear her describe the way researchers in her lab shift effortlessly from hardcore, basic field work to high-tech, molecular techniques and methods in the lab.

First up in her talk was a description of their work on color variation between organisms and within an organism.  As we know, color is involved in a number of important biological processes (warning, mate choice, mimicry, and crypsis).  The variation in pigment pattern of deer mice gives the Hoekstra lab an ideal opportunity to examine natural variation and how patterns are formed.

Peromyscus polionotus (commonly known as the oldfield mouse) naturally occurs in old, overgrown agricultural fields.  These mice have recently invaded new territory in the white sandy beaches on the gulf coast of Florida, the Santa Rosa Islands.  The Santa Rosa Island field mouse (or beach mice) are a sub species of the oldfield mouse, differing in their pigmentation and patterning.  The oldfield mouse has a dark brown coat, light grey belly, and a stripped tail while the beach mice lacks pigment on its nose, its sides and its tail.  Since geologists know that these sandy islands are only 6,000 years old, the researchers can deduce that the evolutionary patterns in these populations are relatively recent. It makes sense if you are a mouse, running around on very light-colored sand, that it would be an advantage to blend in with a light-colored coat. But of course, Hoekstra and her team wanted to prove this.

Dark and light mice.

Their plan was to examine the pattern by tagging 100 light mice and 1oo dark mice and then releasing them to see who survives. It turns out that’s really hard to do. So, instead, they made 1000′s of plasticine models of mice. Half the “fake” mice were brown, half were light-colored. They put them out in the environment in equal frequencies and observed what happened. Using mice models, instead of real mice, gave the researchers an added advantage – they were able to cut out any natural variation (odor, behavior, activity patterns) that might confound the experiment.  Their results showed clearly that the a mismatched mouse (light mouse on dark soil or dark mouse on light sand) had higher levels of predation from owls, hawks, and their other natural predators.  In other words, there was a strong selection against conspicuous mice.

Plasticine mice.

From this field work, they could conclude that natural selection is certainly a driver in this color variation.  While many researchers may stop there, Hoekstra’s lab pushes further to take their questions to the lab to investigate the genetics – and thus the mechanisms.  They brought the dark and light mice back to the lab, made crosses, intercross hybrids, and then took a look at the genetics of the 2nd generation.  They use QTL mapping approaches to identify genomic regions involved with coloration, ultimately hoping to find the causal gene. By examining the 2nd generation offspring, they can see that dominate and recessive alleles contribute to the pigment pattern.  They reason that it’s not a single, simple gene at work – since there is continuous variation –  but they can also see that it’s not 100′s of genes.  Based on the nature of the variation in the hybrid generations, they predicted there are most likely 3-5 genes involved.

By mapping the genotype of the F2s against their phenotype variations, they pinpointed the Mc1r gene (Hopi explains that they refer to Mc1r as the “dream gene”).  They found a mutation in that gene that causes a change in receptor function.  That receptor function change impacts melanocytes that produce pigment (Mc1r is basically the switch that determines what type of melanin is produced resulting in either light or dark coloration).  And with that discovery, the Hoekstra lab found a connection between a single nucleotide change and survival in the wild.

But they didn’t stop there.  They pinpointed two additional gene loci – Agouti and Corin.  But in the case of these two genes, it isn’t a matter of simple coding mutations. Here, its likely regulatory mutations, resulting in increased expression.  So the precise mechanism here is much harder to track down – we’ll have to stay tuned for those results.  But, ultimately, pigmentation in these mice is controlled by these three interacting genes.

The Hoekstra lab also examines patterning difference between dorsal and ventral pigmentation in mice.  The pigment differences are expressed in the dermal cells and dermal papilla.  The mainland mouse has a dark brown coat and a grey belly.  The beach mouse has an upward shift in the boundary between dark and light and their flanks and belly are completely white. Suspecting that Agouti expression is important is determining this dorso-ventral boundary, they tried knocking out Agouti as well as increasing its expression to test the correlation.  Through this work, they determined that over-expression of Agouti in mainland mouse, delays the maturation of melanocytes resulting in changes in pigmentation.

Remvoing the foam cast of a burrow.

Shifting gears from a color differences to a behavioral difference among the wild mice, the Hoekstra lab examines burrowing; looking for the genetic basis of burrow shape. Different species of Peromyscus build dramatically different burrows in the wild and, of course, burrow shape and structure is important for reproduction and survival. Turns out, the burrows of oldfield mice are larger and more complex than the burrows of the deer mouse. The oldfield mouse digs a second “escape tunnel” that radiates up from the nest to just below the surface (which is a good assist when snakes are your predators).  Hoekstra’s team examines the structure of the burrow by, first chasing the residents out of the burrow by blowing air into the tunnel (and catching them). Once the mouse is captured, they inject plastic foam (which she hilariously calls “”pheno-foam”), which hardens in the perfect cast of the burrow.  The cast is treated as a morphological artifact of the underlying behavior. A perfect example of Richard Dawkins’ “extended phenotype”. Using the same lab methods described for the pigmentation experiments, her lab has now identified four genetic regions that contribute to the genetic basis of burrow shape.

A phenodome.

To further examine burrowing behavior in their subjects, they’ve created a special “burrow box”  (which she referes to as a “Pheno-dome”) with transparent walls that allows them to watch (and record) the mice digging a burrow.  Since they’ve found it takes a given mouse roughly 16 hours to dig a burrow, they’ve now pioneered a way to track the mouse through time on the video, in an automated fashion. It’s a sort of fast-forwarding through the footage with a colored outline to achieve an automated/enhanced behavioral analysis.  Using this method, they are able to record when, how, and how quickly the animals dig.

Hoekstra’s efforts to examine natural variation in the wild and then leverage molecular techniques and tools to reveal the genetic mechanisms behind those variations are awe inspiring. Their work spans so many domains, requiring expertise at the level of the environment, the organism, and the gene (a rare combination in these reductionist days!). What’s more, she clearly communicates their sense of fun and the burning curiosity that drives their work – the discovery of genes to tell the story of evolution.

“That perfection of structure and coadaptation which most justly excites our admiration.”  - Charles Darwin

Here are links to more information on Dr. Hoekstra’s work

1.  PLOS article.

2. IBioSeminars.  Three videos of talks by Dr. Hoekstra.

3.  Science Daily article.

Getting Your Feet Wet

 

Peggy Brickman

Peggy Brickman (University of Georgia) lead a terrific workshop this week at the Biology Leadership Conference (#BLC10).  The workshop focused on conducting education research, even if you’re not an education researcher.  She gave a useful summary of the characteristics of good research questions:

• Yield results that move the field forward
• Firmly situated in the literature
• Actionable, feasible, sharply focused
• Reveal meaningful underlying mechanisms 

To companion those, Peggy outlined the most common mistakes people make in formulating their research questions.  Here are common problems that reduce a research question’s interest to others (and to publications):

• Questions that have answers with limited interest (limited scope)
• Questions that have been previously addressed
• Questions that aren’t expressed in a testable way
• Underdeveloped or insufficiently defined questions
• Questions for which there was inadequate or poor assessment.

A Frame? A Monitor? A Window…

NYC MOMA Exhibit

I was in New York City last weekend and stumbled upon a MOMA special exhibit called Inventing Abstraction.  I don’t know anything about abstract art but thought I’d venture in.  I still don’t know much, but I surprised myself by really enjoying the exhibit and finding a few new friends.

A section of the Delaunay painting.

Two artists in particular – Sonia Delaunay and Duncan Grant – caught my attention.  They both experimented with extended, continuous paintings.  In Delaunay’s case, she illustrated a poem by Blaise Cendrars called Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France.  The MOMA exhibit displayed her lovely work in a long, glass case, unfolded, so that you could see the way her abstract images wove together with the text of the Cendrars poem.  In Grant’s case, he experimented with a long, continuous scroll of paper on which he painted gouache, watercolor, and cut papers.  The MOMA exhibit included one such painting of his, Abstract Kinetic Collage Painting with Sound (1914). His idea was to view the painting through a rectangular aperture, 11″ high and 24″ wide.  The painting was to be mounted on twin spools, one on each side of the aperture, and then slowly passed across the aperture.  Since the viewer’s experience of the painting would be impacted by the rate at which it moved, Duncan determined that the painting should be paced by following a slow movement of one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Duncan Grant’s Abstract Kinetic Collage Painting with Sound.

I couldn’t help but connect this lovely idea to Bill Viola, the video artist. In his essay Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space (one of the required readings in the amazing New Media Faculty Seminars), Viola talks about breaking free from thinking of the video/computer screen as a monitor and, instead, think of it as a window.  He encourages us to think of our computers as three-dimensional space, with the viewer wandering through scenes and events evolving in time.

Ten Tools Challenge: Explain Everything (Tool #1)

“I accept your challenge!”

In January I decided to take Jane Hart’s Ten Tools Challenge, committing myself to learning one new tool per month in 2013, by building/using/creating with it. I’m already a bit behind, but gamely marching on – here is my Tool #1 – Explain Everything.

Explain Everything

Explain Everything is an iPad app ($2.99 on iTunes) that can be used to create visual explanations.  You can draw, white-board style, or import images, PDFs or movies to be annotated. The application records on-screen drawing, object movement, and your own voice  providing explanations as you work. Educators could use this to create lecture-ettes and students could use it for projects.  You can import PDFs, jpgs, PowerPoint or Keynote files. Once you create your project, you can handily export it from your iPad to YouTube, Drop Box, Evernote or email it.  Staying true to the spirit of the Ten Tools Challenge, I used the tool to learn how to use it and created the following little story about my Monk’s Bench:

So, thoughts about this tool.  It’s very easy to use – I figured it out by trial and error in about 15 minutes.  If you want a more structured learning experience there are manuals on their site and even an iTunes U course. I like the easy importing and exporting features.  The drawing palette is a bit limited, but there’s enough there to give you the basics.  One thing I noticed, if your project consists of multiple static images – proceeding from one to the next – there is a hiccup in the load (at least there was for me) that you have to take account of in your recording.  In other words, pause in your explanation while the project is loading from one image to the next.

This ‘Challenge’ is a great way to formalize what I need to do anyway – get inside these new tools so that I can fully understand their capabilities.

Chat Gut: Communication Nuances During Online Encounters

We all rely so much on non-verbal communication – experts estimate that a full 70% of the information we pick up from others during a face-to-face encounter comes from “non-verbal information” –  body language, facial expressions, physical proximity, volume regulation, etc.  Since that category of information is unavailable to us in our online encounters (emails, online education, webinars) are those interactions, by definition, less rich?  Inferior?

No doubt, there is something lost when we can not read the facial expressions of our online associates, but I think there are ways to augment and buttress our online exchanges.  It’s just a different skill set; a new way of thinking about information.

Local chat.

After many hours spent in virtual worlds and in online meetings, I can definitely say that I’ve developed an intuition around the way people “chat” and text message within those spaces.  I’ll call it “chat gut”.   The online spaces we use typically include a local chat function.  It’s usually a small box in the corner of the screen where everyone with you live online can chat to the entire group or to an individual, privately.  There is an etiquette to this chat (more on that in a minute) but, to the point of this post, there is a tremendous amount of information conveyed by, not only what you type in that space, but the way you type it.  For instance, I can tell when someone is new to using chat (it’s like I can sense their hesitancy).  More experienced chatters type fluently, quickly, and they use the short cuts and conventions of a chat environment.  For instance, they will use the @ to direct a comment to a specific person, a * next to a word to indicate a correction of a previous typo, or the clever use of italic.  There is also an easy humor evident with frequent chatters – a sort of self-effacing banter – that works like WD-40 to ease the tensions of the meeting.

In online meetings I use the chat frequently – to tap into the heads of everyone in the “room” (what do they think? what do they know? and do they have something to add to the discussion?).  I also use it to make sure they’re there, with me, and have not drifted off. So frequent questions. For instance, “How many diabetes 2 patients do you each have in your practice? Could you  type the number – as a percent – in the local chat at the bottom of your screen?”  Pause.  Wait for the gears to turn and the typing to pour in.  Then follow up…”and what would you say is the primary issue those patients are dealing with?”  That kind of progression – moving from a closed-probe question (that is answered with a straight yes or no or a number) to an open probe question (the answer could be anything) seems to work well.  If you start with loosier-goosier questions, people tend to freeze up.

I thought of this when I read a recent Sunday NYT’s magazine feature on Jerry Seinfeld.  He talked about being able to “read” the crowd during his standup routines.  The crowd which, of course, he doesn’t know and can’t really see.  He reads their laughter, explaining that “there are different kids of laughs. I’m in the dark up there and I can just listen, I know exactly what’s going on.  I know when their attention has moved off…”  Just so.

A Tech Support Parable (With a Happy Ending)

My 74- year old mother is my most reliable barometer for how difficult learning new technology can be. For those of us immersed in new media and online tools everyday, we tend to forget how overly complicated the world can feel.  I offer you this tale, from last night, a tech support parable.

My mom has a new iPad (Christmas gift) that she’s trying to master.  We’ve had a few sessions together with it where she’s mastered the basics – email, searching on the web, and using the camera. She likes her new iPad very much and, for the most part has found it pretty easy.  Up until last night, I’d say that her two main challenges have been understanding the language around the computer (techy jargon) and using her finger to “touch” – she tends to use her nail or not get her finger in just the right place.  But she’s been mostly quite successful due to her good cheer, native smarts, typing ability, and persistence.

Mom has an in-home Comcast connection, with a recently upgraded modem to give her wireless for her new iPad. Yesterday she responded to a message on the iPad asking her to update her system software, which she dutifully followed.  In true Apple fashion, it led her through the steps, screen by screen. When she got to the “almost done” part, her iPad asked her to identify the network to which she would like to connect.  Full stop.  Before she headed out to the Apple Store (which has become a life-line for her, though she says that she always looks for the “Genius” who is patient with older people), she called me (90 miles away).  Given what she told me I explained that the problem she was having was a connection problem, not an iPad problem, and that the Apple store folks would not be able to help her. Oh.

So then we began to troubleshoot together.  We quickly arrived at the limitations of her understanding – what is a network? why does it have a name? what is a wireless signal? why are there other networks in the list (who owns those?), why does it need a password?  I don’t have that password.  If I were to pull out the most common theme to technology problems I encounter it would be the whole access management/password confusion thing.  Passwords for your network, your computer, your Apple ID, the individual sites you visit – which ID and password for what, etc.

After retrieving the paperwork from the Comcast technician’s recent visit we determined that there was no network password to be found. Comcast had thoughtfully provided a brochure with a to-be-filled in worksheet for the technician to write in the name of the home network and the password – both of which were blank.

Hokay, we need to call Comcast.  But I knew I couldn’t do it for her; it was unlikely that Comcast would talk with me about her account.  So, I set up a three-way call on the telephone.  I asked Mom to find her latest Comcast bill, as we would need the information therein.  She gave me the number, I placed the call, and looped her in, and we worked through the (formidable) phone tree (that kept urging us to go to the web site to solve our problems…as if!) and finally got a live person (roughly 10 minutes).  Meet Paul.

I explained the situation to Paul, who was extremely kind and patient. Only problem, Paul has a very heavy accent.  I knew that my mother could not understand him.  So, we played out a hilarious kabuki where Paul would ask a question, I would repeat it to her slowly and loudly, and my mom would answer. Finally we got to the meat: she needed to locate and read off the WEP code on the bottom of the modem.  ”The what?!”  I urged her to put her phone on speaker, while she located the modem and studied it to find the code.  It took a few minutes to find the speaker button on the phone (“why do they make these buttons SO small?!”). Paul and I waited patiently, listening to her rummage around, “Oh, my! Those numbers are so small! I can’t read that!”  I suggested she find her magnifying glass.  More rummaging.  ”Here it is!”  Now she read off the code….H21247323bA556…..I wrote it down and read it back to her.  Check.

Now, says Paul, we need to type that code into the network password blank to join the network.  I translated: “Get to the screen with the blue Join button, Mom.”   She’s still got the phone on speaker, so she can have her hands free, but that means I have to shout.  ”H!!!”  ”212!!!!”  ”Wait, wait!” she says in a panic, “There are no numbers on this keyboard!”  Oh, right.  The iPad has multiple keyboards.  So I explain that she’ll have to access the “number keyboard” and then go back to the “letter keyboard” – that long access code had no less than five switches between keyboards, each one painstaking at her end.  ”But I can’t check to see if it’s right since what I’m typing is just dots.”  Riiiight.  Oy.  She finally typed it all in and clicked “Join”.  ”Unable to join the network, ” she announces proudly.  Paul and I sigh.  Let’s try it again, just in case there was a mistake.  Paul reminds her about caps/lower case.

“Ok,” says Paul.  ”Maybe the technician did assign a password, but didn’t write it down.  I’m going to ping your modem from here and zero it back to the Access code, just to be sure..”  ”What’s that?”  asks my Mom.  She’s still hanging in there but I can tell that Paul might as well be speaking Greek and she’s getting tired.

Paul puts us on hold (extremely annoying music) while he does his bit.  She and I try to talk, shouting at each other over the ridiculous music and end up laughing hysterically.  Then, suddenly, my mom is no longer there.  Oh, right!  When Paul pinged her network from Comcast, the phone cut out.  Oh, Paul, you should have thought of that.  Now it’s just me and Paul.  On our own.  He comes back and walks me through what to do.  I also ask him to walk me through how to change her network name and password to something a bit more memorable.  He does, and of course, those steps are even more arcane than the shenanigans we’ve been up to so far.   I’ll have to be hard-wired on her network, with a laptop, type an IP address in, get to her SSID, change the network administration settings…yaddha, yaddha….I’ll figure it out, eventually, I’ve got to run since I’m sure my mother is wondering what the heck happened.

I call Mom back.  As I feared, she’s mystified as to what happened.  ”Why did you hang up on me?!”  I explained what happened when Paul sent his signal from home base.  ”But that was the internet, not the phone!”  Right.  Let’s let that one go for now.  So, she gets back in position and we go through the gymnastics of typing in the WEP code again, this time I remember to pause in the shift between letters and numbers to give her time to change keyboards.  ”This is crazy!”  says my mom and we both laugh, realizing we’ve now been working on this for nearly an hour. And, amazingly, we get it right on the second try!  BAM!  She’s online.

I explain to her that when I’m there visiting next, I will get in and rename her network and assign a new password.  My Mom helpfully suggests that perhaps we could choose a shorter password, something with only letters.  ”How about ‘shit’?”  she offers.

So, a couple of things here….

1.  I can’t say enough good things about my Mom’s persistence.  Lesser people would have given up much earlier.  I’m not sure what motivates her to hang in there, but hang in there she does.  And, I think that persistence is the key.

2. Do modem and computer manufacturers have to name everything in such confusing ways?  WEP, ping, router, IP address…it’s all just gobbledygook to most people.

3. When technicians come to your home to set up your network, could they please write everything down?  Fill out the darned paperwork provided, please.

4.  Can’t we come up with something more workable with this whole password management thing?

5.  The importance of holding tight to your sense of humor.