Scott and I have begun searching out internet connections for the road. It's not a easy as I thought it would be or as the commercials make it seem (of course). What we've found requires a two-year contract, may have questionable service areas, and probably doesn't really work in Antarctica. It is, as Scott put, "more of a committed relationship than a one-night stand kind of service." I hate to buy into a service that may or may not serve my purpose on the road.
This shouldn't be too much of a complication for one class since we could always pop into a coffee shop or wifi hub while I graded and checked emails but the other class is more complicated. It requires two live lectures per week plus a one hour office hour session and pretty steady email. I don't want to be the annoying girl in the corner of a coffee shop with her headset on explaining what a subject-verb agreement is. I can only imagine the roar of the espresso machine over the audio, too. My students wonder what the terrible clanking noise is when my radiators come on in the apartment right now.
I'm going to continue searching. The 4G network would be lovely but I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg to make internet happen in the woods of northern California.
Another consideration: if I use the internet for work, is that tax deductible?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Using Internet or buying a specific Internet service (and/or the equipment necessary & monthly fees of a two-year contract) is absolutely tax-deductible (until the IRS tells me otherwise :)). If you're using it for personal use too, you might only be able to deduct a portion of it (similar to if you work from home, you can only deduct the percentage of space that's dedicated to your "home office"), but you should still be able to deduct a lot of it.
ReplyDeleteAs for service--I dunno. I have a 3G smartphone (Droid OS on the HTC Eris from Verizon), and I was going to say, get that! But it wouldn't do much in the way of live online lectures (maybe you could Bluetooth in the car?) and its interface isn't large enough that you wouldn't want to throw it across (...the room? the car? the campground?) after an office hour session.