Look around the halls these days, and you can find all kinds of new technology. With iPods, iPhones,laptops, voice recorders and all other kinds of new electronic devices out on the market, there are many ways to embrace this new technology. Hillwood High School has officially been geared towards college prep, and, if so, shouldn't we as students be preparing for how we should study, learn, and absorb information given to us? Many college students are starting to use their iPods, MP3 players, and laptops for more than just music, videos, and research, so why shouldn't we? One thing that has been helpful for years is recording lectures. You can record what has been said and then play it back to hear everything that was said. If you are one of those people who really doesn't like to take notes, this is a perfect thing for you. You could even go a step further if you have a laptop with a web cam on it; you could video record what the teacher says during class. Afterwards, you could go home and write the most important points that were said down, then make an easy A on the test, but before you can do anything like

this make sure your teacher says its okay. Now that the entire school is wired for Wi-Fi access, you can do research right in class without having to ask permission. The internet here at Hillwood already has a filter on it so you couldn't go to any restricted access sites while on the campus. It would make research in class very simple and wouldn't take up time to go down to the library or computer lab, then find something to research, and then do the research and pack up and possibly be late to your next class. Laptops would just be an all around good idea to have in the classroom. Now to go along with the laptops, you could download the video file that you took during class into your iPod, and watch it on your way to and from school. So after you're done using it to study, delete it from the memory, or save it and use it to help study for your finals. You could do the same with the audio files that you take from the class. Most computers these days will generally have a way to change the file type from whatever kind of file it saves it as, to an AAC or WMA file so that you can import it into either iTunes, Windows Media Player, or whatever you use to play videos and music. So all in all, technology could be a very useful tool to help you learn information that would otherwise go in one ear and out the other. Now instead of just using your iPod to listen to your favorite artists, or just surfing the web on your computer, think about how you can use the technology at hand to help better your education and become a better student.