{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Christopher Dawson - Athol-Royalston Director of Technology\/Education ZDNet","description":"Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University and began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling.       Christopher Dawson is currently the technology director for the Athol-Royalston, MA school district and often spends his days in a host of computing and IT issues common to most small businesses, educators, and non-profits. He also is an avid blog for the Education blog on ZDNet at http:\/\/education.zdnet.com.In our discussion, we talked about a variety of existing developing social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Ning, and their impact on education, integrated devices and the impact of messaging in a school environment, software purchasing decisions at schools, and effect and use of social networking and Web 2.0 tools on younger children in the K-5 market.","author_name":"MergingArts Conversations","author_url":"http:\/\/www.mergingarts.org","html":"