By: Hannah McCarthy

The days of talk and chalk are but memories. For generations of students, going to school has always been a part of growing up which they may have endured rather than enjoyed. For many, the highlight of the school day was the sound of the dismissal bell.

Today's kids must wonder what all the fuss was about. These days, being at school is stimulating, enjoyable and (dare we say it) fun! There are many reasons for this change of attitude, including the increasing use of technology in the classroom, in particular the introduction of smartboards.

A smartboard is a large, interactive touch screen connected to a computer and projector. A teacher and a group of students are able to use the smartboard at the same time. How does it work? The teacher prepares a lesson on his or her computer which is intended for display on the smartboard. Once the material is projected onto the smartboard, the content may be manipulated, deleted or added to, either by the teacher or by the students. Words and pictures may be moved around the screen by using a mouse or keyboard, or by manually 'picking up' data and dragging it to a different part of the smartboard. New text can be added or removed when appropriate. A student can be invited to the front of the class to move an image or write on the screen using their fingers rather than a pen or pencil. Can you imagine the thrill of touching the smartboard with your fingers and moving a picture up or down, or dragging it from one side of the screen to the other? And how exciting it must be to watch a word appear...as if by magic!

By: Adam j. davis

I hate getting nickel & dimed. You know what I mean.

You go to your bank and you need a statement from 7 months back and they want to charge you $10...for printing out a sheet of paper. Or, you get charged fees for checking your bags on an airline or they charge you $10 for lunch on the plane, etc.

I was just at Panera this morning and they charged me $1.20 to get cream cheese with my bagel. $1.20 for cream cheese!

This fee pile-on bull**** is really getting on my nerves. It's like these companies hire a consulting firm or a bunch of MBAs that see clear to boost revenue by 5% this quarter by creating a heap of ill-will from all of their customers. It's just plain dumb. Just roll everything into one easy price. But, alas, that sort of simple and common sense thinking doesn't crank up the billable hours for the consulting firms. But I can't shake the thought of my bagel; it should have been $1.49 with cream cheese and they could have just rationed the cream cheese a little more. The worst car salesman is the one that tells the customer the total price of the car and add-on's ($20,000 for the care, $1,500 for the sunroof, etc.), versus the successful car salesman that tells people the monthly payment amount and "for just $5 more per month you could have a sun-roof and power windows..."

Ok, anyway, I was going somewhere with this as it applies to raising private money. If you aren't already aware, the financial services industry is perhaps the biggest perpetrator of 'nickel & diming' customers. You would be absolutely floored at the fees that are piled onto everything. Consider the advertising costs of mutual funds (12b-1 fees) - it's pretty ridiculous that the investors in a mutual fund have to pay for the managers of the fund to attract more capital, which enriches the managers as they get paid a % of the invested assets of the fund. Not to mention that the larger a mutual fund gets, the more difficult it is for the fund to achieve higher returns (more capital = more places to put it, which causes return inhibiting limitations).