Monday, July 4, 2011
e-books
I love e-books, and I believe that paper text books should be a thing of the past. I am not a fan of text books to start with, and the textbook industry is as much as a rip off as the oil industry. With e-books we don't have to use paper. There are no chemicals involved in printing, and they don't have wear and tear issues. They weigh nothing so they don't cause back strain problems by overloading back packs. I don't even accept written papers. All digital. They are searchable, and when writing papers students can copy and paste that all important quote. Paper books should become antiques. I know some people get that warm fuzzy feeling from having the book in their hand, but that last time I checked there's nothing warm and fuzzy about our (mostly poorly written) text books anyways.
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Alan, good to see you again as we both start to wrap up our degree plans.
ReplyDeleteI really resonated with what you had to say about having a captive audience when the students are placed in front of computers. Students in this day and age definitely have developed an ability to hyper-focus on digital media.
I do see some challenges in really taking advantage of this however.
The first issue is that of steering that focus toward the desired channel. Even basic network access provides numerous possibilities to get distracted and even get in trouble. There are, of course, software tools which can help to mitigate this risk, and setting up the computers up in the classroom can further help. The fact remains that this generation grew up with computers and many students are VERY familiar with how to circumvent network security software. I saw it abundantly last block during my student teaching in a computer applications class.
The second issue I see is the potential to over use this focus and detract from the collaborative and interactive aspects of learning. This generation has already lost so many chances to develop much needed social tools that they really need the opportunities they can get.
In the end I think judicious and purposeful use of the captive audience tool is a useful tool. Great post.