Reflection #11: Apple vs. Dell

What?  Last week, our class shared personal features that they know and love about their computers.  Our discussions were inspiring because I left feeling like there was still so much to learn.  They were also insightful because I left feeling like I had learned so much!  If I could name 1 feature from all of the presentations that stuck out to me, it was the Microsoft Word Translation option (Russian!).  However, I found myself very curious about Macs because of the extremely enthusiastic comments about them.

So What? So I went home that night and told my husband that Macs do this and that and Mac users are given wonderful customer service, and his response brought me to reality.  "No one beats Dell.  They provide the very very best customer service.  Call and someone will answer to assist you within ten seconds.  If something is wrong with the computer, they'll send someone to fix it within 24 hours," etc.  I realized that it's not so much about which provider offers what, but how much the customer knows what's available to them.  See, I could have been easily swayed by the Mac users simply because I was not aware of what my own provider offers!

Now What? Well, this has to do with Education because we all use, and will use our technologies everyday towards scheduling, grading, lesson planning, web-browsing, emailing, etc. and if they fail on us - we must know how to fix the problem quick (and at an affordable cost).  Likewise, what is the point of having such incredible programs like Microsoft Word and Powerpoint if I don't even know all of the features on them, much less how to use them?  Now that I have become aware of the Translate feature on Word, I have already translated a Sunday School newsletter from English into Russian so I can send it along to my students' parents.  Granted, there are some flaws due to ambiguous phrases of speech in English that translate VERY awkwardly - but the program still makes it 100x easier to rewrite such a document into another language.  You just have to skim through a few times to make sure it flows properly.  This is a feature I plan to use in the future - and I will continue to explore all of the others!