Views and Concerns of an Educator

As a teacher my views on technology in the home is a must. The world is changing so fast at times that I think it imperative that students and parents should be able to keep up. Also education is moving, although slowly, to become a paperless environment. My district has moved to marking attendance using a software by the name of Chancery. We also have a district wide gradebook named GradeSpeed. (What I find wasteful is that both of these programs have the feature of attendance and gradebook, I wonder who was the ‘genius’ who decided that we needed both programs instead of just one.) Education is using technology to push students to utilize technology in every aspect of learning, from online manipulatives to turning in homework via campus website. Even parents, in some districts, are expected to communicate with the teachers and keep up with their child’s grades via the internet. Again all things are moving to become more convenient for all involved in a child’s education.


November 17, 2009 the Dallas Morning News printed an article about the new AT&T netbooks featuring the new Windows 7. The article was of great interest to me due to the fact that I have been considering purchasing one of the smaller versions of a laptop due to the fact that I have to use my own laptop in my classroom for presentation purposes. With that being said the netbook would be a great investment but the cost worries me. Mainly because once I would purchase it I would have to pay another monthly fee for wireless internet for the netbook to be beneficial in my classroom. This would bring my monthly wireless cost to $100 from $35. What I believe AT&T should do to assist their customers is to bundle the cost so the increase won’t hit the consumer so drastically. The article itself states how sales have increased for AT&T, I just wonder if they will pass savings down to their customers.