Steve Jobs 1955-2011
This week we saw the loss of one of the most brilliant minds in the tech world, Steve Jobs. Many of our students only know a very successful Steve Jobs. Since our students were born after 1998, they do not remember a time without iPods (the term 'podcast' came from iPod+broadcast). Steve Jobs can be credited with the iPhone and recently the iPad. Literally the last decade of technology has been dictated by this man and his company, Apple.
Looking farther back, our students may not realize how revolutionary Steve Jobs was. After dropping out of Reed college, Jobs & Wozniak went on to create some of the first personal computers, computers that used a new, hot peripheral (the mouse), and created their own operating systems (macintosh).
I believe many students are huge Apple fans and I hope they will be inspired by Steve Jobs' achievements over the last 30 years. I know that educational technology would not be where it is today without the vision and persaverance of Steve Jobs.