I found this particular website frustrating at first because they required me to pay $5 to read an article. However, I then discovered the blog portion of this site and decided, heck, we are doing a blog lets see how these people do. The blog entry I read was on a particular subject I find fascinating about new technology in the schools, the E-reader. The traditional way of reading appears to be going extinct. Everyone and especially their mothers seem either to own an Ipad (or some other tablet), a Nook, or a Kindle. I personally am quite fond of books. The tactile experience of flipping pages and the aroma of new books (or old books for that matter) are both priceless experiences of an actual solid book. This experience is most likely going to be taken out of schools in the near future. With Apple Inc beginning to make contracts with major textbook publishers, schools will soon be able to put their entire curriculum on an Ipad. There are a few advantages from what limited experience I have had with digital books. First off, they are cheaper. I have bought books off of Amazon for free (some of them some-what rare in print) and others are much cheaper new online than in print. I imagine with textbooks this will be doubly true. However, I wonder, if you do not have a well-behaved classroom, how much the expensive would be to upkeep tablets or how much would need to be replaced each year. In the blog I read, the author noted that “Transmedia storytelling allows a reader to explore the content of a book in a nonlinear way. Multimodal elements might include links to original documents, interactive maps, social media sites, online activities and games, or mobile apps that add additional interaction or access to related subject material.” In many ways, I agree with him. Digital reading allows ease of access for student to be able to access supporting texts and resources for their textbook or perhaps a document you would have them read. Although, there is a disadvantage the author of the blog did not mention. There is much frustration that comes from spending hours and hours in a library looking for books, trying to find the right resources, and flipping through books trying to come up with a decent quote for a paper. I wonder, and yes I will be sounding quite traditional here, if the responsibility, perseverance, and determination of traditional research in a library gives something to the students E-reader’s cannot. Granted, it takes these same qualities to sift through countless web pages or online books for the same information, but is there a difference? To narrow the question, does new technology allow our students to rely on the easy way out? Does it teach them to be lazy? In the digital age, we have become so used to having infinite knowledge at our finger tips that we do not bother to memorize information or take the time to truly understand certain texts (I am definitely guilty of this). Personally, I think that E-books, like the author of this blog, offer many advantages to the reading world; however, I do think that there will be some negative effects. The post for this particular blog entry is listed below.
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