C4T #3

For this comment for teachers series, I comment on Jenny Luca's blog, Lucacept Intersecting the Web. The title of the first blog post that I commented on was Is Your School Missing the Future? This post included a link to a TED Talk video. The post begins by asking the reader to apply this quote from Larry Page to schools, "The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future." Jenny elaborates on this thought by stating that schools should expose their students to technology in the classroom instead of leaving that for the students’ personal lives. Jenny ended her post with this statement, "We can't afford to let our students find the future outside of the school experience. There's a fair bit of guidance necessary to help them navigate this future and our schools should be leading the way, not impeding the process." I believe this statement is very true. This closing statement made me think of using technology in schools as a necessity for students, not just in the classroom, but for excellence in their future.

The second post that I commented on was Moving to the Cloud? What Should you Consider? written by Jenny Luca. This blog post discusses the use of Google Apps for Education. Jenny’s school recently transitioned to this program. The program is beneficial because of the collaborative docs and the 30 GB of storage per user. Also, Google Apps prevents school staff from putting school documents on a program not censored by the school domain such as Dropbox. In her post, Jenny also described in detail the research she did on Cloud Computing before the decision to switch to it was made for her school. Although there are security considerations, Jenny and the executive board for her school believed this switch was appropriate. Jenny makes the point that it is necessary to take the time to thoroughly review all of the pros and cons of Google Apps for Education before adopting it as a part of your schools educational program.