It was pointed out to me the other day that the Netbook was actually created for the educational market rather than the “cheap and cheery” segment that it currently exists in. Dell has made a Netbook specifically for the education market that features an LED that faces forward and flashes when the Internet is being accessed. This allows the teacher to know when the student is goofing off. With new e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle DX and a whole range of Sony readers being recently released you cannot but assume that the world of education is moving to each student having either an e-book reader or a Netbook of some sort.
The benefits of this are obvious in that there will be less paper used and that you can store millions of textbook’s on a device the size of one A4 book. Benefits aside, I think this is a terrible idea.
In our hyper-connected world where you’re fielding information from Twitter, Facebook, SMS and (perish the thought) face to face communication it tends to get difficult to concentrate on one thing. When sitting at a breakfast this morning I couldn’t help but laugh (and then shudder) how we spent time checking our Twitter over breakfast. Now imagine if you were brought up in a world where micro interactions such as Twitter were not only acceptable but the norm.
As such, if you were in a class or lecture with a computer in front of you, would you really concentrate on that lesson if you could be speaking to friends or surfing the net. Sure, you can disconnect the kids wireless connection but realistically every single cellphone these days is a modem to a world of wireless entertainment. To be honest, I cannot think of any reason why you’d need a computer in the class. I do think an e-book reader is a better option but again, you can easily pop the latest comic or novel on that reader as easily as a textbook.
If the future of learning is computer based then I for one am worried if it carries along the specific path. If a PC were to replace teachers (which I sincerely hope never happens) as a supplement rather than a replacement then I feel we might be on to something.
It only takes a story like this where a University has entirely scrapped their library to realise that we’re in some sort of trouble here. I’m not saying that we should stick to books forever, I just think we need a better solution than outfitting our students with technology and helping to create a generation of socially inadequate misfits.
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Scary thought. I wonder if the present day children’s children will even know how to speak to one another face to face.
I suppose this is a great idea to save on paper, but at what cost? Fascinating thought.
Very interesting article.
I saw a news segment a few weeks back about this very thing Saul- in California or Oregon or West Virgina (fuck if I remember :0 ) they’re handing out Itouchs and using EBooks. Imagine- no more text books…I wonder if the publishing companies will allow that to happen?