I teach elementary music in a district in Santa Clara county, California. I have no office. I have no classroom of my own. I have no work computer. Teaching at five different elementary schools (two cafeteria stages, one shared multi-purpose temporary classroom, one backstage area where custodial supplies are also stored, and ten first- and second-grade classrooms) creates weekly challenges. Twice in the past two weeks I've been displaced by school picture day and several times school assemblies have been scheduled in the cafeteria at the last minute - on top of my already-established class time. In fairness, several times that same time conflict has resulted in the assemblies being rescheduled. With my pace of two schools per day, this leaves me little time during the day to get to an available computer, light up, and check up on my e-world.
Enter my personal sidekick: my Samsung i600 Smartphone. It's my phone, my Internet access (downside: approx. 24-33K modem speeds), even my mp3 player (SD card slot adds mucho memory). I tried composing a blog entry on it this afternoon and it worked - until I tried to go back and edit before posting. I hit the "back" button, forgetting that it has absolutely no forms cache. All the text I had painstakingly entered with my T9 predictive text entry: gone. Fifteen minutes and a sore thumb, all for nought. That's what learning is about, though: After the time and effort it cost me, I'll never make that mistake again.
Websurfing is a bit cumbersome on this machine, though. I've become much more appreciative of mobile-oriented sites with minimal or no graphics (the Onion has a great example of a mobile site) as bandwidth is a precious commodity. I can turn off image loading, but many sites use images instead of text for links. Oy vey. Anybody know a good mobile site or two?
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