Today’s Inside Higher Education has an interesting piece about “Bookless Libraries“.“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” “Kaput.” exclaims Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University in the article. But is the library dead or is the concept of the library changing as more materials are delivered electronically? I can’t tell you the last time I sat foot in my university library, there’s no need. All the research resources I need are online. I do fondly remember the days as a student of wandering through the stacks of journals, flipping through the archives after I’d already found what I was looking for. But I don’t have to do that anymore with the search capabilities and journal access provided by my university and Google. I’m only disadvantaged but the ludicrous policy of some publishers to delay publishing full-text articles in digital format by months, sometimes a year.
The November issue of Campus Technology addresses the changing concept and design of libraries in their article “A Space for Collaboration“. The article highlights several initiatives to redefine the library space. The Taylor Family Digital Library at the University of Calgary is designed with more work space for students to work collaboratively. Many workspaces will feature digital touch tables and digital globes that use the touch table capability in a geographic context. The Orrade library at Santa Clara University provides “educational experimentation rooms” where faculty try out new learning environments.
It’s not so much that libraries as a place is dead, but their purpose is changing. Do we really need to house print copies of so many books and journals anymore? Probably not. Libraries should convert their spaces into meeting places for research and study. As Inside Higher Education article points out, academics from a number of disciplines are not only going online for the library needs, but are creating new “online environments [that] are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.” Though certainly true, the immediacy of human contact, especially for student study groups in an academic setting rather than a social setting like a student union building is good. Social spaces provided in student buildings tend, in my opinion, to be somewhat distracting. To have a dedicated space to go to, away from a noisy dorm room or the clatter of an office hallway is a preferable. Libraries can become places to share ideas and provide space for conducting workshops, which come to think of it, was the reason I last visited my university library. And at these new libraries are those who can provide immediate help in finding the resources to conduct our education and research, librarians.
Simplify Your Life with Yoono is the topic of my latest podcast. In it I cover several of the basic features and leave you to explore the rest. Yoono is one of the best Firefox sidebars I’ve ever used.
It’s available on the web here and in the iTunes store.
The first “Digital Professor Podcast” is available here. This podcast is a short demo of ”Process”, a outlining application I’ve found quite useful in tracking the progress of my projects. “Process” can be downloaded from jumsoft.com.
System requirements: Mac OS X
The title of this blog post came to mind as I was reading the article “A Campus-Wide E-Textbook Initiative” in the Educause Quarterly. The article summarizes Northwest Missouri State University’s feasibility study of transitioning from paper textbooks to e-textbooks. The pilot study utilized nine textbooks covering a range of disciplines from business, psychology, mathematics, information systems, to music. The response to one of the survey questions prompted me to write this post.
The survey gathered data how the use of e-textbooks affected reading and study habits. One question asked if students felt they read more when using physical textbooks than they did using e-textbooks. Sixty percent of students felt they read more with using a physical textbook, and herein lies the question posed by the title of this post. How much engagement, not just reading, occurs in an e-textbook in comparison to a paper textbook?
What’s not indicated in the survey is how similar the level of engagement is between the e-textbooks used in the survey. An e-textbook can be anything from just text in a digital format to a highly interactive experience requiring students to actually engage themselves in the content. A well-designed e-textbook engages the user (I won’t say “reader) in ways other than passive reading. Well-designed e-textbooks become learning environments that leverage the advances of publishing in a digital format enable. E-textbooks can engage the student in active learning, allow them to explore linked resources, utilize social media applications for sharing and collaboration, assess their understanding as they proceed through a topic and provide immediate feedback to them and their instructor. Paper textbooks often provide assessment resources, or links to online resources but do students use them? Is the convenience of clicking on a link in an e-textbook or getting immediate feedback to review questions more likely to get students to use these resources?
My point is, as schools investigate transitioning to e-textbooks, they need to pose the right questions. Will e-textbooks engage students better than paper textbooks? Is there added value beyond the cost savings that can accrue through their use? It’s not just a matter of just reading an e-textbook, its using them.
Jose A. Bowen, a dean at Southern Methodist University has removed computers to discourage the use of PowerPoint, “the worst form of technology in the classroom” and challenged his colleagues to teach “naked”. View his ideas on how to effectively use technology provided by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Link to Chronicle of Higher Education video
TechCruch’s MG Siegler posted an article interpreting Steve Jobs comments in the New Your Times about Apple’s interest in eBook devices. It should be apparent to all from Jobs statements before last week’s Apple music event that Apple has no intention of creating an eBook reader. Only once in recent history has Apple created a single use device, the iPod, for entertainment media. But even the iPod has morphed into a multi-use device, the iPod Touch/iPhone. It would not be in Apple’s interest to build a standalone eBook reader. There are several players in the field already for such hardware. Though garnering lots of press, I wonder as does Jobs just how well they are selling. What Apple would be interested in is selling eBook content through the iTunes store to drive the purchase of a media tablet.
It is a media tablet that is needed for distributing eBook content in the education market, not the standalone reader. Students from elementary through graduate school do not need an additional device to carry around. What they do need is a well-done touchscreen media device capable of performing daily tasks related to their educational pursuits. For most this may mean just a tablet, capable of taking notes in class, reading an eBook, and communicating with their teachers and classmates. The device must be of sufficient size (10″ inch?) to comfortably allow for text entry of notes and playback of most media types. Storage space is not be of great concern due to the advances in cloud computing and cheap external drives for archiving files. A few years ago rumors began swirling about Apple’s potential move into the tablet market, and an announcement seems imminent next year. In January of 2008 a patent for a Mac docking station was released. Such a pairing would be ideal for students.
Mockup of Apple Tablet and Docking Station (Courtesy appletell)
In the meantime, others are testing the touchscreen tablet waters. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington promised a special press and user event for last July for his “CrunchPad” media though nothing official has seen the light of day. Netbook maker Asus has made a half-hearted foray into the touchscreen tablet field. But we continue to wait for an elegant solution to bring eBooks to life in a truly useful device. Patience grasshopper …
I just downloaded a new and improved version of iTunes. When syncing my iPhone I notice a few new tabs, one of which is labeled “iTunes U”. This is a welcome feature to sort iTunes U content out of the podcast bin. Now you can choose to sync:
- all from all or selected collections
- all unplayed iTunes U from all or selected collections,
- 1,3,5,10 of most recent unplayed all or selected collections
- 1,3,5,10 of least recent unplayed all or selected collections
- all new from all or selected collections
- 1,3,5,10 of most recent new from all or selected collections
- 1,3,5,10 of least recent new from all or selected collections
Most of my previously downloaded iTunes U items were tagged as “Movies”. They can be changed by following these steps:
Ctl + mouse click on the item and choose “Get” Info->
Options->
Media Kind->
Then choose “iTunesU”
This will organize them under the iTunes U item in the Library.
Very handy.
Get iTunes 9 here.
Though I’ve used most browsers, I keep returning to Firefox as my “workhorse” browser due to amazing number of extensions and add-ons that have been created for it. Though I’ve bulked it up with several add-ons, there are a few that have proven especially valuable for my professional life.
Yoono is one of the most valuable extensions I use. It gathers in one place (the sidebar) my social networking sites, Google Reader to read my RSS feeds, web notes, and music streaming via lastfm.com and imeem. Web notes has been the most important feature to me personally as I write drafts of blog posts and conduct research. My web notes are stored “in the cloud” so they are accessible from any of my computers. I can even read, respond and compose in GMail without going to the application. All this while listening to my Pat Metheny playlist on Lastfm, so very cool.
Morning Coffee is the first add-on I use each morning. My daily routine consists of getting a real cup of coffee, starting up Firefox, then clicking on Morning Coffee. As the app’s site describes, Morning Coffee “lets you organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously as part of your daily routine. This is really handy if you read sites that update on a regular schedule”. It’s a great app to start your day.
TwitterFox is my light-weight Twitter app that I use when I don’t have the Yoono sidebar open or my Seesmic desktop app running. TwitterFox adds a small icon to the status bar and notifies you when those you follow have posted tweets. You can tweet from TwitterFox and it can handle multiple Twitter accounts which is particularly important to me.
Evernote is my preferred information capture application that I’ve written about before. Evernote provides a toolbar button and context menus to add a selection or entire page to Evernote. If you haven’t used Evernote, you should check it out.
Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) syncs my bookmarks across the various browsers I use on all my computers, i.e. laptop, home desktop, and office computer. It can also sync passwords. This one is a lifesaver.
The extensions/add-ons above are the ones I most rely on. I’d like to hear about the extension you “can’t live without”.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that CourseSmart LLC has created an application to bring their textbooks to the iPhone and iPod Touch. More than 7,000 titles will be accessible for students to read a book, view their notes, and search for phrases. One can only access their books when connected to the Internet. This may be an impediment to some, but the continued build out of wireless access on campuses and in student residences will make it less of an issue over time.
This is a welcomed announcement, especially in light of Amazon’s failure to deliver a truly capable eTextbook reader and recent rumors circulating around the mythical Apple tablet. This may just be the shot in the arm for the eTextbook market. Though I have my own issues with CourseSmart’s eTextbook interface, e.g., lack of interactivity with content, if delivered on an Apple tablet this initiative will give students a unique opportunity for mobile learning. The free application is available from the iTune App store.
(Image courtesy of iTunes app store)
