She then shows me the Ubuntu screen (yes, our school uses Linux) chugging along, refusing to get to the login screen.
"Well, what do you think you should do?"
I am met with a blank stare. "Tell you," she replies after a few moments. She then tries to hand me the machine for me to fix.
I gently push the netbook back towards her. "I'm glad you told me; however, what do you think you should do about it?"
I get the blank stare again. With some prompting questions, she finally tells me she should restart the machine, and heads back to her seat.
Students need to be taught to troubleshoot, not depend on someone else to fix the problem for them. That's why this year I decided to always meet their technical questions with the question, "What do you think you should do?" Then we discuss what they should do when they encounter certain problems. The key is to let the student generate the solutions. If students suggest a solution that doesn't relate to the problem they're having, let them know this, but then prompt a rethink of the error. Restate the problem they are having and ask what solutions would best "fit" their technical problem.
For example, I had a student that was taken aback by Google Chrome suddenly closing on him. His hand shot up, his face panic-stricken (he had been using Diigo to highlight and sticky note a web page, and was concerned that he had lost everything. This is something else my students need to learn-the concept of autosaving). He worriedly told me that Chrome had just crashed. After I asked him what he thought he should do, he told me he should restart the machine. After discussing why this solution didn't quite fit the problem he was experiencing, he decided (and the solution came from him as I kept prompting for solutions the entire time--after explaining that restarting is usually a "last resort" troubleshooting option for most problems) that he should just reopen Chrome and see what happened. Voila! Chrome restarted, and he then learned about the miracle of the "Restore" button that would magically bring back all of his tabs.
Last year I would just tell them what to do. Big mistake. I wasn't doing them any favors, and I was just slowly driving myself insane by repeating the same solutions to the same students over and over and over again. The only thing I was gaining by doing this was a permanent facial tic that would start up every time a student told me they were having a problem.
I believe that 1:1 teachers have a responsibility to teach students how to respond to technical issues without resorting to "learned technology helplessness." When students see a screen they don't recognize or experience an unexpected problem, students shouldn't see teachers as responsible for solving their technical problems, just as students shouldn't feel that is is the teacher's job to do the work of learning for them. Because that's what we're doing when we fix their computer problems for them--taking the burden of learning how to troubleshoot off them rather than teaching them this valuable problem-solving skill.
And think of this added educational bonus: you can teach them to transfer their technology problem-solving skills to real-world problems in your subject area. Ah, the joys of teaching for transfer.
Is it easier just to do it for them? Of course it is. But I always think of them a few years from now, alone in front of a computer and having a problem. Do I want them to sit in helpless frustration and thinking of who they could call to help them, or be empowered to be able to solve the problem on their own?
Let's just say I am more than willing to endure lots of blank stares this year.