Is there an app for that?

I have found during the last few months that although I am not a technology native, I can do pretty well with a manual in my lap. I can remember using a rotary phone and even telling the operator the number I needed to be connected to when I lived near Woodland, Georgia when I was a child. I am in my late thirties. I remember our first microwave. I remember having to get up and turn the channel on the console T.V. when the news came on at six for my father. Technology has transformed every facet of my life. My children use iPads, iPhones, laptops, Nooks, MP3 players, six different remotes with twenty buttons each, game consoles, flip cameras and compression clothing in the course of their everyday lives. They are technology natives. Just the way the child of an immigrant who does not speak the language of a new country will learn it faster than the adult, I learned about the new technology of my lifespan faster than those who were adults when it was introduced. When that immigrant child grows up and has children those children are native to the country and speak the language fluently; today's children are there. They are fluent in today's technology. I don't mean that they know how to use a Smartboard the first time they are given the opportunity to use one. I mean that they are unafraid. They seem to know intuitively that an icon matches what it is used for, that clicking and dragging moves things around and that there is an app for everything they need one for during the day. Recently, I was at a training and I realized that technology is not hard nor is it for brainiacs. It's scary. Many adults were introduced to technology at work and they don't associate it with fun but rather a change in the way they function at work. Our children have been introduced to it as games and entertainment. I was intimidated when my Smart board was installed. I could not use it because the software was not on my computer and the cord was not long enough to reach it anyway. I waited. I waited some more. Then, because I have very little patience, I decided I could put the software on my laptop and my desktop myself. I did and I was sick to my stomach the whole time. I was scared but you know what...uninstall and restore points can erase all the trouble I can come up with so...I am now using my Smartboard attached to my laptop in my classroom and my students use it daily and are comfortable with suggesting solutions when it doesn't work like I planned. They are calm and unaffected while I start to search for a dry erase marker and chart paper because my whole whiteboard is covered by the Smartboard. Technology is great...when it works. When it doesn't, flexibility is the the app for that.