Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the
days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something
other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music.
He received a degree in Information Systems from
Johns Hopkins University
and began a career in health and educational information systems,
with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming
and database modeling.
Christopher Dawson is currently the technology director for the
Athol-Royalston, MA
school district and often spends his days in a host of
computing and IT issues common to most small businesses, educators,
and non-profits. He also is an avid blog for the Education blog on
ZDNet at
http://education.zdnet.com.
In our discussion, we talked about a variety of existing developing
social networking sites like
MySpace,
Facebook, and
Ning, and their impact on education, integrated
devices and the impact of messaging in a school environment,
software purchasing decisions at schools, and effect and use of
social networking and Web 2.0 tools on younger children in the K-5
market.