Technology

You hear about parents having to be taught by their children about how to use new technology: I thought of myself as a bit of a techie, but not any more.

Last month my old phone finally died and Abi bought me a new one. "You've got bluetooth" I was told by a friend at work. "Oh, great" I replied, not knowing quite what he meant. So, my 14 year old son had to show me.

The next day when I had a free lesson, I decided to walk round the maths faculty rooms with my bluetooth on. I detected nine phones on, and went into each classroom, asking the students to turn their phones off. Seven of them did... the other two changed their names to a rude message to me.

I told this to a friend from church, who laughed so hard, he has now permanently changed his bluetooth name to **** off Sparky!


I managed to get the last laugh though. I visited the classes next time they had maths, with a message that our friendly community policeman was on his way with a tracking device that would identify your bluetooth name, your phone number and where you were sitting to within three feet.

To avoid detection, about 20 students have all changed their names to Reuben (my son, who is also a student at the school). He keeps getting told off by teachers for having his phone on in lessons, even when it is off. I have decided that perhaps from now on I will keep my phone experiments to looking at the manual at home...