A Day in the Life of a Student in the Year 2009

Dustin Massop

It is seven AM. You have difficulty waking up even with technology to help with so many aspects of your life. You have a shower and get dressed just like they did ten years ago. You eat a quick breakfast and grab your school notebook computer equipped with a specialized operating system for your school district. You walk down the road to wait for a school bus. The bus arrives with its hydrogen-powered engine. You get on and sit where you do every morning.

While on the bus, you check your notebook to see what you are doing at school. The computer shows you that you have a test in your biotechnology class and your English essay is due. You do some last minute edits to your essay so it is ready to upload.

You get tired of looking at your essay so you check the chat group where your school friends hang out. You hear from students already at the school that your English teacher is not going to be at class physically. He will be there in a video conferencing session but you still have to upload (or hand in) your assignment to him through his network.

You arrive at school. Your school is a new technology high school that requires a notebook to access information. The school will lend a notebook to a student who doesn't have one of his or her own if that student’s parents pay a large deposit in Eurodollar, the new world currency. Some people are protesting the new technology school systems because they require the student to have a computer which can cost a lot of money, but the government responds by claiming that there are non-technology schools available. The problem with this defence is that such schools are rare, and it is difficult to get a job without enrolling in a technologically enhanced school.

Your first class is History. You are covering World War I and you have already read the chapter in your notebook. You are assigned to type an essay on World War I on your topic of choice. The teacher loads a digitally mastered video onto the network that is shown on the front projection screen. Any students who wish to see the video on their own screens can access the video from the network. A discussion group starts during the video that is a supervised on-topic chat regarding the video. The teacher explains things in the discussion group to avoid interrupting the video. You log the discussion to read later while you use the school's bandwidth to download music videos.

The next class is English but since the teacher isn't there anyway, you stay where you are. Through the network you log onto your English class and are able to communicate with your teacher through a video conferencing session. You are also able to communicate with your class in the same discussion group that your teacher is in. The teacher expects all students to upload their essays to the server and read the next assignment which is available on his network.

The school network system is custom-programmed to have the functionality of the web in its own Intranet. The school's Intranet network has access to the internet as well. Features of the school network include the ability to download class multimedia from the teacher's portion of the server including textbooks, videos, assignments and research sources. The assignments, essays and other work are uploaded to the teacher through the same network. Each classroom has it's own discussion group, or chat room, where there is supervised chat for students to communicate in. This doesn't stop people from talking vocally between each other or for presentations.

Students have an ID which is used not only for the school network, but also for people to contact them on their notebook, home phone or video phone. These phones are equipped with a caller identification function to help the receiver identify who is sending the call.

At the end of your day you take the bus home and either read the materials that you downloaded at school or type your homework assignments to have them ready to upload the next day. As soon as that is taken care of, you play Internet games on your notebook and hook it up to an external monitor and sound system. This game utilizes new technology to create a virtual reality community in which you are a spy for a group of gamers. Your job is to explore a building in search of hostages. The games uses real time rendering with the same graphics quality used for special effects in movies ten years ago. After you quit that game, you play a few new music videos from the Internet while you help with dinner.