Disclaimer: This is going to be a very long blog… I’m going to make almost all of the paragraphs independent, and not rely on the other portions of the essay to understand parts of it.
Today was KSD STEP’s (Student Technology Educational Partnership) last meeting of the 2008-2009 school year. We had our end of year celebration at the administration offices and it was pretty fun. We had one of the Information engineers (lead computer guy) come and talk to us about what we do, and what we are in for as students.
STEP isn’t based on technology, it’s based on the future… which is technology. I found out today that my school district’s website was entered into the Smithsonian institute for how technologically advanced it was… that was in 1995. My fellow group members are very amazing and outstanding students. Some produce great films, others know a motherboard like the back of their hand, and others interested in networks and other technical developments. I fall under almost all of those categories on minor levels; I know how to use video editing software, I could build a computer from scratch, and I’ve even got some networking in me… I just haven’t found my sweet spot for technology, I’m more of an innovator; and trying to get people into technology.
The traditional structure of the classroom has changed, we’ve gone from “I’m the teacher, you’ll do as I say, and learn what I teach” to “I’m the teacher, I’m here to help you, here is what our goal to achieve is, here are the instructions, if you need help ask questions.” Students have access to so much technology that we can learn virtually anything we want to, we just need to set our minds to it.
The United States has a large advantage due to a previously strong economy and a strong abundance of technological developments. So many people have access to computers and the internet, which helps to support stronger educations. A majority of my knowledge in the computer sciences field has come from surfing the internet and absorbing what I see and applying it in real life. Many people are trying to limit, and turn the internet into a business. I cannot support any of those, because I believe that the one thing that needs to remain open is our internet.
I’ve heard it from two significant people now… an IT administrator, and my freshman English teacher. I know everyone is talking about it, however today it sunk in pretty deep. There is this new theory that is going around “The world is becoming flat” and according to the evidence I’ve seen, I can support that claim. China has 1,330,044,544 citizens, and India has 1,147,995,904 and the United States has 304,059,724.
Now more than ever, the youth of America needs to get into gear and education needs to be a high priority. The famous “bell curve” along with the populations of the world’s leading countries tell us that the United States is going to be behind in the long run. In a few years, India will have as many people graduating with PhD’s as the United States will have graduating; from what I’ve seen. The youth of “tomorrow” is going to be left in the dust cloud left from India and China’s taking all of the high tech, high paying jobs.
Right now, our software relies on a numerous amount of things that can cause our computers to lock up and crash, however many companies like Microsoft and Amazon are creating these “clouds” which is in a nutshell… using their servers for our programs. For example… if you needed to render a video, you could use Microsoft FrontLoad (just an example software… nothing is called FrontLoad) which creates videos, and you press a button, it sends your files to their servers, and they render your video in ¼ the time it would take running on your hardware.
This could mean wonder’s for businesses, schools, and other orgizations for rendering videos, compiling software and other things. I can see the slogan for Microsoft FrontLoad now… “Imagine having the world’s most powerful supercomputer, in your room.”
You can see that technology hasn’t stopped moving forward, so neither should we. Though the world belongs to everyone we should all take pride in what our nation can do.
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