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5.29.11
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5.12.11
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5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
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5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
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5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
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Laptops in the schools: Teaching illiteracy?

2.12.06
In an article in today's Berkshire Eagle, "LOVING THEIR LAPTOPS," painting an overwhelmingly positive picture of the short-term results of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative's project that has equipped over 700 seventh graders in Pittsfield and North Adams schools with Apple G4 iBooks computers, a student is quoted as saying, "It makes our education a lot easier...because we can look up things instead of just using textbooks."

Granted, this is just a kid talking, but still...this quote, which is left to hang by itself, betrays a stunning attitude of indifference toward books. Granted, most contemporary textbooks are awful, and you can't rightly blame schoolchildren for preferring computers to them. But still.... are we really raising a generation of people who will believe that you cannot actually "look things up," find information, do searches or research, in books?





I applaud this observation. It has become increasingly clear that there has been a drastic decline in motivation in school age children. It seems that most children, like many of their parents, feel that information or objects that are difficult to obtain are not worth having. Curiously enough I have always believed that it is just these things, those that demand perseverance and investigation to attain, that provide the most gratification.
2/17/2006

Seth, you raise an important issue. But here's how I see it. The definition of "look things up" has changed...for the better! What I hear the student say is that a sophisticated and comprehensive library is at the other end of the web. Textbooks are absolete.

This interpretation raises several issues.

Vetting, in the sense of making a careful and critical examination of someone or something, information found on the web. How do we teach this skill? How did we who are "library-centric" learn? You know the difference between a screed and a scholarly journal, what has the web done to our ability to make such distinctions?

But a second issue is one that points back to those of us, like you and me, who have a vested interest in our abilities within a certain taxonomy. Are we jealous that our skill (such that it is) in "book larnin'" is threatened by better ways to access and process information into knowledge.

The chilling thought is that we are culturally becoming postliterate. Is this something different, not better? Or are we watching an evolution in how we live and learn comparable to the invention of moveable type?

dlm@dlmweb.com
2/17/2006



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