What In Tarnation?!?!? In the Classroom

An Illustrated History of WIT?!?!?

Original Post: September 01, 2002

One of my new buddies over at Mere Maddness (Ed. now of Super Blessed), Ganns, had some very nice things about the Gone Ape Network(Ed. now {Cranium Leakage}). That started me thinking about the history of What in Tarnation?!?!? (You have permission to leave class to visit Mere Madness after this lesson. Don’t let the eyes scare you away!)

It all started about 5 or 6 years ago when I decided to make a little webpage with all of my favorite links. I used Claris HomePage and created a page that was kept locally on my beloved PowerBook 1400. The page had the unweildy name: Christopher’s On-Ramp to the Superinformation Hightway, I thought it was funny. The page was green and yellow. The only copy of this page is still on the PowerBook that hasn’t been turned on in awhile. I hated making this page and decided that I would leave the web page creating to someone else and I would stick to just surfing the Internet.

The next page was created while I was at school at SBU. I took an educational technology class in which the basic HTML tags were covered and I began to understand the limitation of HTML. So I tried again with the newly renamed Christopher’s Start-Up Page. The page retained its green and yellow color scheme and was coded in everybody’s favorite text program NotePad. I hosted it on a free Tripod account.

I found coding by hand to be tedious but it gave me a good foundational knowledge of how HTML works. My third redesign was done in a program called Trellix. I kept the name Christopher’s Start-Up Page, changed the colors to teal (close to green) and peach. I made my own graphics by playing around in Adobe Photoshop.

The fourth incarnation of my personal webpage added some of my education projects from SBU including three thematic units. The name changed to CSW’s LaserSite. The color scheme included mostly yellow, white, and red. The site was moved off of Tripod and got rid of the popup ads that plague all Tripod sites.

After quickly getting tired of the bold design of CSW’s LaserSite I decided to redesign the site with a green (again!) and blue color scheme. I also decided to change the name to What in Tarnation?!?!? in honor of one of my students my first year of teaching. (Read the full story here.)
The biggest addition was of course this blog. I decided to try the blog after watching the ScreenSavers on TechTV. Leo Laporte, one of my favorite “geeks,” commented that he just started using Movable Type, switching over from Blogger and he loved it. I decided to give it a whirl. Too bad I didn’t realize what all went into installing the program on the server. I had no experience with such things, but after following all of the directions I was able to get everything working. I shared it with my friends and they liked the idea and now we have many fine blogs like Avoiding Evil, Time to Believe, Future Hope, The Screening Room, and Out of My Mind. WIT also got it’s own domain name, http://www.whatintarnation.net.

So what does the future hold? Well, I will tell you that Pressed and I are currently working on two new blogs, one for Mr. Huitt and one that will be different than what we have done before. I don’t want to give too much away, but I think it will be fun. As far as WIT?!?!? I haven’t gotten tired of this design, as a matter of fact, I kinda like it, but I’m sure that the look will change in the future.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for the future of What in Tarnation?!?!? Leave them when you comment.

What in Tarnation?!?!?

I want to create a site with a collection of links to help teachers use the Internet for research and lesson ideas. All on one page, you have a collection of content specific sites, general lesson plan sites, a built in web search engine, and a comic strip to boot (check out the Buffy Links)! What more could you ask for? Actually, if you do think of something, use the feedback area below to tell me about it.

But, Mr. W! What in the tarnation is the deal with the name of the website? I’m glad you asked. It all started with The Little Rascals movie. One of the characters, I can’t remember which, said “What in tarnation?!?!?” and I cracked up laughing. Then durning my student teaching, one of my friends had a student say something with the same phrase! Again more laughing. Then, my first year of teaching, a student who we will call Jeff, was reading in the classroom when some students from another class came into the room. Jeff looked up and yelled (cause Jeff does things like this) “What in tarnation!” I laughed for what seemed like forever. So in short, the phrase “What in Tarnation?!?!?” makes me laugh.

About Me

I graduated from Southwest Baptist University and I am currently a third grade teacher at Wyman Elementary School in Rolla, MO. In my spare time, I do some web designing and any odd jobs that come my way. Want to know some more up to date information? Check my blog.