We’ve all had those jobs … the ones where you wake up and wonder why you put up with it all. I have to say that I am lucky enough to not be in that camp. I actually love what I do … I like the people around me and I am energized by the opportunities I see to help shift thinking. It hasn’t always been that way … I’ve had my fair share of miserable jobs … there was that gig in grad school where I sold mobile homes, and that other one where I painted houses, the one where I did landscaping from the time I got up until I headed home, oh and the one where I managed student housing for absentee landlords … there are others …

I hear so many people complain about their positions on a regular basis and it just got me thinking about it all. Do you like your job? Why do you (or don’t you) like doing what you do. I assume most of my readers are in education … what gets you excited about what you do? Why do you get up and come to work everyday? I do it because of the chance to get people interested in thinking about how they use technology in an appropriate way to impact teaching and learning … how about you?

I know almost all of you have heard about the $100 One Laptop per Child program that Nicholas Negroponte has been touting for quite some time now. I won’t go into the details, I just wanted to say once again how important this machine really is. I really don’t care what OS it runs, how much RAM it has, how fast it is, or any of the other techno-details that surround it. Just the fact that a guy like Negroponte has decided to make it his mission to do this says something about the man. I’ll tell you one thing, it is certainly a more responsible approach than “No Child Left Behind.”

Now I don’t pretend to know Negroponte, but I do know people who have worked for him and I know that most of them say he is (1) a genius, (2) a tyrant, (3) and rock star. He uses all of that (and some cash) to travel the world to promote his vision of the future … if you’ve ever read Being Digital then you understand why his visions are so strong — he’s been there since the get go. That’s really it … just wanted to point out the obvious. Imagine the possibilities this opens up.