Digital Libraries: Shifting the Landscape

This article describes the effort to digitize the world's books and speculates on the educational possibilities of ebooks. Educational institutions are hard at work with tech companies like Google at digitizing and making electronically available tens of thousands of books. The article describes the burgeoning usability of ebook readers - since this article was written in 2009, it's safe to assume that current technology surpasses what was available then, and that usability of ebooks has only improved by the standards of the educators interviewed in the article. Most interesting are the ways ebooks can be used in education: I was particularly intrigued by the automatic text-to-speech capabilities of many ebook readers, including the Kindle. The educational possibilities of this simple feature are endless - from helping the blind without braille to encouraging grapheme awareness in young readers.

My prompt is "What if every student had a Kindle?" I think this would on the whole be a great benefit to education. Ebooks are much more convenient than real books in many ways. You can fit any number of books inside one lightweight ebook, and as far as communicating non-fictional information goes, they're objectively superior to real books, which are often out of date. The initial price would admittedly be a high barrier to entry for most schools, but imagine the costs of maintaining a typical high school library. Building maintenance, book upkeep, paying librarians, etc. After a few years of using a ebook-only education, a school would doubtless make up for its costs. I don't think they do a lot for learning on their own, but they're definitely a more efficient way to handle what is currently handled by maintaining huge libraries of textbooks.

Possible downsides might include high costs due to damage or theft. Ereaders are pretty sturdy, but children have the mysterious potential to destroy literally almost anything. This could be improved by developing an even more sturdy ebook chassis specially designed for elementary schoolers. As far as theft goes, it's not as big of a problem as you'd think. Like many pieces of lended-out personal electronics, the school would have the ability to remotely disable functionality of any reader. Some readers even have rudimentary tracking devices. On the whole, I think the downsides are worth considering, but that they pale in comparison to the benefits switching to an ebook education can bring.


Bull, G. & Sites, M. (2009, August). Digital Libraries: Shifting the Landscape. ISTE Learning & Leading Digital Edition. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-august-2009.aspx

Virtual Field Trips

This article describes how virtual field trips (VFTs) can benefit teachers. There are two types of VFTs - asynchronous (non-realtime) VFTs are basically educational websites that pretend to offer a field trip experience, while synchronous (realtime) VFTs are essentially field trips conducted via videoconferencing. Rather than actually travel a long distance for a real field trip, a classroom can take an interactive video tour with an expert tour guide, live and in realtime over the internet. VFT claims to be the next best thing to being there in person. Many organizations offer this service, from museums and historical sites to science labs and NASA centers. What's even cooler is that many of these VFTs offer tours and lesson plans that directly tie into the K12 curriculum. So not only will the experts give the students an educational tour of their facility, but they will give lessons that directly supplement their classroom education. For example, you could schedule a VFT with the Baseball Hall of Fame for a lesson on batting averages that ties into the math lessons your class does every day - all on targeted grade levels. I went and checked out the Baseball Hall of Fame's site, and they actually offer a pretty wide variety of comprehensive lesson plans, from statistics and averages to even a series of lessons about the civil rights movement.

I think VFTs are a very interesting way to supplement instruction. It can't be denied that being able to actually see places and talk to experts would certainly engage students more than the alternative. For example, why would a class in Kansas care about marine biology? Well maybe they would be more interested if they could take a VFT of an ocean lab. However, I am concerned about the relative cost. It is important not to be too blinded by fancy technology, and instead look at what service this provides and how much it costs. What this amounts to is hiring a professor to come in and teach your class for an hour or two, and it's not likely that your school has the capability. The article said that less than 1/3 of schools nationwide have the necessary equipment for this technology. If your school is in that minority that has the capability - great. For such schools, VFTs are a great way to interest your students by letting them directly engage with the material they're studying. If not, setting up the high-tech videoconferencing equipment that the VFT-providing organizations rely upon seems to be pretty expensive, and I don't think purchasing the equipment provides enough benefit to be a very high priority for most schools. And despite the name "Virtual Field Trip," I think these are hardly a complete replacement for a real field trip. These days, students look at computer screens on a daily basis - one could argue a VFT is just another day of staring at a screen. While VFTs might be more engaging than regular instruction, nothing should be able to compare with being able to actually see the place with your own eyes. Field trips play an important role in student development by letting them physically engage with the material, and sitting in class watching a screen will never be a wholly equal substitute.

VFTs are an innovative and engaging way to supplement instruction in technologically capable classrooms, but the high barrier to entry for most schools in America means that most teachers should probably first look into less costly and more educational ways to integrate technology into the classroom.

Is Blogging Worth The Risk?

Hey class, I know this is a little late, hopefully someone will comment on it or I get partial credit or something. Its been a little hard for me to get to my homework before the weekend starts. Anyway, the question is: Is blogging worth the risk? My answer is: Yes, definitely.

I think the question is actually pretty dishonest, because "worth the risk" implies that there actually is a risk factor inherent in the process itself, when in fact any risk in this proposition involves irresponsible teachers. And irresponsible teachers are definitely not worth the risk to keep around. As an analogy, blogging is no more dangerous than driving a car, as long as you know the rules of the road... but if you don't you are asking for a horrible accident.

It's 2012 and no matter how computer-illiterate you are, everyone should know by now what the internet is and how it functions. It's a device that allows anyone to communicate with anyone else, with little restriction on privacy. Any rational teacher should understand automatically, just from this description, that putting any sort of information on the internet that you want to keep private is an irresponsible action.

So if its really this simple, why is there such a debate? If a teacher is going to maintain a professional blog, he needs to understand these simple truths. I don't think we need any sort of teacher education program to get across this very basic fact. If a teacher is going to break his professional demeanor and communicate irresponsibly about his job in any way - not just online - then he has no business teaching in the first place.