I am kind of on a mission to make good use of technology in the classroom. That means finding good materials, planning good lessons, communicating clearly with my teachers who are not used to this kind of thing, and helping them to use new technology with me. These are all difficult things to do and I frequently fail miserably, but I am getting better.
Since I am a consumer slave, I am excited that this mission is an excuse to buy things. Will I get an iPad (72,000¥) soon? If I do, I will have to buy a VGA adapter (3,000¥) so I can share slideshows and movies. But if I do that, I’ll have to buy the iWork applications for making and displaying slideshows (3000¥). And if want to present YouTube videos, I’ll probably need to get applications that will download, convert, and create chapter breaks in a video file I can show anytime (price yet undetermined, but I’m thinking I can find options for free).
Also, since it’s easy to freak out my coworkers when I use these new things, I want to make the experience comfortable and useful for them, too, which is why I might buy iWork (11,000¥) and register a MobileMe (10,000¥) account. I just got a free trial of iWork and it is so much nicer than Word. I can’t believe it! What they say about Apple programs is… true! Also, have you ever seen how damn easy and beautiful it is to share documents on iWork.com? It’s a lot easier that emailing them back and forth between 3 team teachers who may or may not ever check their email! Maybe I could do without all this stuff, but it’s for the sake of education, don’t you see??
How much money will I spend when my free trials run out? Find out right here in 30 days.