I love my mac, but has apple started a trend for consumers to demand beauty as well as functionality? Does an object that is just a tool need to also be beautiful? Michael Angelo’s paintings are exquisite, but his tools were everyday. So now a final question, does beauty blind us of substance?

Windows XP (2001 release date) became a good, stable working version of the windows platform. It is not excessively flashy or beautiful. In 2004ish the Ipod exploded and changed our music experiences for ever (and soon after our cellphones). This eruption brought Apple to the attention of the masses as a beautiful and simple operating system. Windows jumped on the Beauty band wagon of OSX and created Vista. Vista was released and flopped in two years. The goal in my view of Microsoft was to create a product that was visually stunning, but they forgot to make it actually work!

This trend seems to have also spilled over into the classroom. Districts love to have shinny new toys and tote the benefits of technology to student learning. But does the vanity begit the substance? Making the tool (technology) the focus will never improved instruction. Vanity or Substance, technology does not equal good instruction; good instruction stands alone.