Dinosaur
Dinosaurs can show up on computer screens, but they can also be the computers themselves
There is no such thing as a brontosaurus. About 130 years ago, paleontologist O.C. Marsh was in a bitter competition with Edward Cope. National Public Radio retells how Marsh discovered a skeleton that he dubbed Apatosaurus in 1877. But it was missing a head. So this “fame-hungry trailblazer” just threw on the skull of one of his other previously discovered specimens. When the completed fossils of a real Apatosaurus were found together it didn’t match up with Marsh’s, so it was given a new name: the Brontosaurus. The disappointment about the identity of the true Brontosaurus has failed to reach elementary school textbooks two hundred years later. Many schools are still left with dusty computers as old as the Mesozoic Era itself at a time when they might need them the most. A Campus Technology study calculated that there are eighteen million students taking classes through cyberspace in 2014 just to keep up-to-date with the Information Age. Schools in the United States need to reboot to include more electronic resources that won’t leave them so slow it “hertz.” While uncovering the bones of the problem, along with the causes and the solutions, perhaps humans can prevent a colossal meteor crash of their own.
How does one know if there is a pterodactyl in bed with them? The dinosnores. Too bad the U.S. has put on their Bose headphones to drown out the noise of some pesky flying reptiles. The problem of an electronic crisis that America is facing continues to loom overhead with a thirty foot wingspan. The real roar of the impact is heard from the brachiosaurus colored walls of colleges. A Dell study found that technology helps students prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. Disappointingly, when it comes to career readiness, countries across the globe are clinching advantages quicker than the United States. With the competition of the modern world growing ever more mechanized, young American generations will be at a disadvantage. Perhaps they already are: Dell reported that over half of Chinese schools use advanced technology on a daily basis and the U.S. was at half that number. Roughly speaking, that’s the ratio of a T. Rex’s thumping tail to his tiny arms.
Dinosaurs are extinct because they didn’t take baths. Phew. The multiple causes of the technological shortage prevent its extinction. Too bad it wasn’t as easy as the dinosaurs. Congress is trapped under a deficit as huge as the largest dinosaur, the spinosaurus. So legislation is hard to pass – but even when it is passed, it’s not far reaching enough. The President has proposed a 750 million dollar tech initiative for things like iPads and Office Programs. Unfortunately, the New York Times reported a few days later, schools like Cannon Falls will be some of the last rural locations to gain government support because something like insufficient bandwidth in urban areas is a far more mammoth problem.
insufficient bandwidth in urban areas is a far more mammoth problem
— Sydney Erhardt
Speedy-footed velociraptors could teach these government officials a thing or two about fast paced progress.
Museums have old dinosaur bones because they can’t find any new ones. Good thing the some states haven’t hit an archaeological wall yet when it comes to solutions for our schools. A US News article detailed a measure that Cannon Falls High School used when implementing Smart Boards: in-house experts. Those who received the technology first learned the ins-and-outs and then spread the information via free sessions to their fellow colleagues. St. Cloud subsidized the cost of the hardware with their bring-your-own-technology program that allowed kids to use personal electronics for class work. With snow day make ups piling up across the nation, northern New Jersey is ahead of the curve with their virtual school day program: laptops sent home the night before the storm. Of course, the next day there always seemed to be at least one lazy bones with an unfinished presentation on the stegosaurus.
Lack of technology in schools in the United States has become a detriment for the country, but things have gotten less encrypted with possible solutions to the fatal causes. But before an ignorance in America could be going down in scientific history right along with climate changing volcanoes as causes of eradicating a species or, in this case, eradicating success. NPR bantered about O.C. Marsh, theorizing that the non-existence of the friendly Brontosaurus could be due to “…all those Brontosaurus burgers everyone’s favorite modern stone-age family ate.” Just realize that the only change is in the name: from Brontosaurus, meaning thunder lizard, to Apatosaurus, meaning deceptive lizard. But who knows? Because of the state of technology in the United States, the textbooks might not uncover this fossil for a long, long time.
Sydney is a senior and is involved in speech, debate, and National Honor Society. She enjoys playing scrabble and watching law and Order, aspiring to be...
