CreatorWorship

I was so regular about blogging until this Autumn when it all fell apart. Taking a class at the local community college after about 24 years away from the classroom has been a fun challenge. I believe time studying how students study has caused me to be a wiser student, but an old brain is simply slower, or at least this one is. With the immense amount of time pressure and brain strain I just cannot feel justified in blogging, but I just could not pass up the following short interaction in class yesterday:

My students and I were discussing one of my warm-up questions at the beginning of class. The question asked why Earth was considered to be in the life zone of our solar system. In order to contrast our privileged position I contrasted it with Mars. One student mused that “they” were talking about sending people there.
Another one said, “I wouldn’t want to go”.
“Why not,” I replied.
“There’s no wifi up there.”
I reasoned, “If you went to Mars, NASA would send you, therefore, you would have wifi, the best wifi in the solar system. They have wifi on the International Space station. They e-mail home.”
The student replied, “You really could live on Mars, then.”
“So you think that you have to have wifi to live?” I queried.
“Yes, I would.”
“I went many years without wifi and had no problem.”
Several students chimed in together, “But you didn’t need wifi back then.”
Another student added, “Yeah, you need food, air, water, and wifi.”
One would like to assume that there was some tongue in cheek here, but the first response, “You really could live on Mars,” was intoned as one of those aha moments when the student understood that spaceflight was not just science fiction, all because NASA provides wifi there. This one should go in that book that all teachers say they will write one day about student reactions.