The school year has begun. I love being back in the classroom for three hours per day. American Studies is using google docs to reduce paper, allow sharing of documents, assign presentations that can't be left at home, and equalize the playing field between have's and have not's. As if attempting to direct forty-seven juniors through google docs doesn't add stress, my team teaching partner and I were awarded a Smartboard. We love it, no more overheads, one machine does it all (well, not quite), we grade themes by bringing up the "doc" and grading, snap a picture, convert to pdf and save. It will then be returned to the student AND NO PAPER WAS USED! I follow a guy on Twitter who goes by "Teach Paperless" and he is an inspiration. Oh, I am trying to use Twitter on a regular basis and I am seeing potential classroom applications every day. However, I am going to two days of training on Blackboard this week and so I have another technology to learn and implement. Oh, I will turn fifty-six in October and my brain hurts. One question, why do many administrators when faced with a decision between FREE and pay choose to pay? My American Government teachers have successfully used Moodle for three years but we have to use Blackboard. Free vs pay. I don't understand. We didn't get a pay raise but we got Office 2010, Caterpillar Tractor Company uses Office 2003. Open Office is free, why do we need 2010? I know the pay guys add some bells and whistles but FREE is FREE......I have lived in a home without cable television and survived, I don't own a smartphone and the sun still rises in the morning, I drive a manual transmission Toyota that gets 40 plus mpg on the highway and it's not a Hybrid. Help me understand why complicated is better. Where is Thoreau when I need him?