Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Educational Technology Cost of Political Campaign Ads

Negative advertisement after negative advertisement. Makes me want to stay home on election day. But then I got to wondering, what could all the money spent so far on campaign advertisements...remind you...JUST ADS, be better spent on when it comes to educational technology. So far $180 million dollars has been spent on political campaign ads and we are not even in "sweeps" week for the candidates yet.

Allow me to do some math. If you spent all that money on one piece of technology what would you be able to buy?

- 1.2 million FLIP Cameras
- 470,000 Document Cameras
- 180,000 SMART Boards
- 203,400 Clicker Systems
- 425,000 Airliners
- 360,000 iPad's
- 720,000 iPod Touches
- 450,000 Desktop Computers
- 150,000 MacBooks
- 1.8 Million 1 year subscriptions to Glogster

So the question then becomes, how could you spend $180 million dollars to benefit education and students across the country. While our future "leaders" THROW AWAY MILLIONS, we are fighting over education reform. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture?