Slashdot Mirror
Iowa College Goes Paperless
As reported in this Wired article, joelav22 writes that an "Iowa college plans to go completely paperless. There are no libraries, just work stations for e-books and online information. the article supports that 'The school plans to be an entirely paper-free campus. Last year, about 75 telecommunications students participated in a pilot program to go paperless. Each student used a Compaq iPaq handheld to access e-textbooks, syllabi and class materials, and to take notes and exams.' less time spent in a library equals more time for beer and filming amateur Girls Gone Wild digital video!"
Heavens! That ain't gonna be a pretty site!
Well where are they going to get the money for this kind of thing? I'm not spending my own money to buy a comp for that sort of thing. Also, what if the comp breaks... who is to blame and how are they going to replace it? :P
Slashdot submitters go spellcheck-less!!!!
So, have they scanned in every paper resource that wasn't already online? Seems like a big, copyright infringing job. The article doesn't talk about that, so it seems like a good amount of research will be hard to do.
~ The Fudge Report @ http://mywebpages.comcast.net/fudgereport/
for research documentation. There may be lots of info on the net but half of it is outdated, and a quarter of the rest is just plain wrong. Unless they are going to sport subscriptions for everyone to one of the big DB companies this is going to erally hurt researchers...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Don't we all spend enough time before computers already?
It usually means that because everything becomes accessible via computer, everyone wants their own print-out, thus you get about 5x the paper.
Call me nuts, but there's no fucking way I'd go to a college without books! I understand their desire to be trendy and cool, but a college without a library doesn't have much of a chance to stay a real, accreddited, college.
A college without a library is called a tech training school. They teach people how to pull cable.
I don't think I can curl up with an I-Paq and get any studying done. The left side of a book is designed so you can rest your head on it and read the right side. Then you fall asleep. Falling asleep on a I-Paq = time for a new I-Paq.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Our state is trying something else. Their passing budget cuts to help drive students away from college and eliminate the need for paper. Take that Iowa!
University of Nebraska
Each student used a Compaq iPaq handheld to access e-textbooks, syllabi and class materials, and to take notes and exams.
Exams and textbooks available on the same iPaq? I'm shure noone will cheet here. These grads are NOT someone I would want for a job.
What I'd rather have, instead of a paperless campus, is one that provides good mobility between the spheres of paper information and electronic.
Give me a Paperport scanner or something similar, and give me electronic versions of my course assignments on a website. But also give me the sheets of paper.
The vital thing is to be able to use paper for what paper is good at, and electronic systems for their own purposes. There is no reason to throw out what is otherwise the right tool for the job.
Removing books is an_stupid_00. That means that your ability to study is limited to the availability of computers, and the functionality of said machines. Multimonitor becomes a MUST in this case. I would not mind electronic versions to do full text searches of, but dammit I want dead tree editions- zero failure chance, save physical loss. I also do not want to be forced into a zero-ownership system for my textbooks (which seems to be the primary thrust of schemes like this.)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
right, this will last a total of one semester, when they find that no one will do any work and spend all of class looking at porn instead of taking notes!
You now have a tremendous reliance on clean, stable power. Without more details, I would imagine that there are additional cooling facilities that become critical, not just desireable. I would hope that there is an extremely fast turnaround on equipment repair and maintenance or that paper you need to finish for tomorrow could be late...
I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a Mobile P4 2Ghz, 512MB, 30GB, 2.2lb laptop.
I'd hate to see how their all-digital bathrooms are going to work.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Isn't the only reason that a library is legal because they have a limited number of copies of a book? I mean if a new book comes out and goes in the library, its ok for the library to lend it out because they only have a limited number of copies. Assuming they will have a collection of fiction these university students will be able to make an e-book copy of every book in the library and share them with the rest of the world. A new book will come out, these students will make e-book copies, and anyone who wants can have it for free rather than going to Borders.
The book companies have been on "our side" in terms of DMCA and stuff, we don't want to make another RIAA evil organization.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Guess they'll be installing some of these then.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Besides the really horrific idea of just 'discarding' their paper libraries in favor of digital media, (They can't be planning to really do this. It seems like conversion would cost far more money than it ever saved.) The introduction of digital textbooks is just too good an opportunity for DRM to get its stinking, rapacious tentacles into the virgin halls of academia in the form of pay-per-read, unresellable, instructional media.
Now if they were planning on introducing textbooks in entirely restriction-free formats like ascii text, PNG/HTML, or postscript, then I can see this happening, but I trust them to do this like I would trust a drunken frat boy at a catholic girls' junior high school.
The article never mentions DRM, but there is a telling quote about half-way through:
"We are heading toward a world where, instead of reading a bunch of Bill Gates' quotes, you want to have a video clip of him actually speaking that quote."
Thanks, but I won't be burning my bridges just yet.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I reckon the students over there will spend lots of money on printing out stuff. So much for "paperless", and what's with this paperless anyway, why is it so important? If it's for environmental reasons, it doesn't make sense because the average person is just going to print more now.
Paper is easy, you can take it anywhere, read it anywhere, you can spill coffee on it, you can fold it, you can write in the margins, it's usually high-quality and not as straining to look at as a screen, you can make aeroplanes out of it, you can tear it, you can store it for 100 years and probably still read it without too much trouble.
as for replacing BOOKS with electronic texts...that's still a problem because of readability due to resolution. It takes longer to read text on a CRT or LCD vs. a piece of paper. I've noticed it's easier to read text for longer periods of time on an LCD vs. a CRT, but the rate of absorbtion is not as fast as nice sharp text printed at 150 - 600 DPI. Technology will fix this eventually, but until then it's a partial solution at best.
---Mike
I can't imagine having to do all of my research and and read all of my class texts on a monitor.
Ouch. My eyes are going bad quickly enough as it is.
And what about the mountains of resources that aren't available in digital format?
Have you ever tried to read a long article or web page on a 240 x 320 pixel screen? Mobile is good, but quite unpracticle for viewing stuff which is printed in books with much larger pages. I dont think I would want to read all my books and do calc3 problems on my ipaq. Perhaps a titanium powerbook with them wide screens, but not anything with less than 800x600 resolution.
I think it's much too early to push something like this in an area, where man resources are needed by the stuedents, and I don't think the technology is mature enough. Sure, it may be good enough for a paperless home or office, but schools still need books.
They say they're going paperless, then they say that students pay for printing after 20 pages.
If they were really going paperless, they'd be outlawing printers, too.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
at my university (Trent University in Peterborough Ontario) the physical holdings were horrible! The most recent psychology journals were from the 1970s... and I studied there in 2000 as a Comp/Psy major. They were so bad in fact that we had to regularly rent school buses to take us to the University of Toronto library, 1.5 hours away. The great thing about digital books is that universities can subscribe to volumes on an "as needed" basis, or a per article basis -- pay for what you use, and not for the whole collection. Also, have you ever tried to look through the volumes upon volumes of abstracts manually, in paper form? Sooooooooo much better is the digital format. I love it. I think iowa is being brave, and moving in the right direction -- the thought of going 100% paperless in one fell swoop is a little daunting though.
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
They seem to be school that
1) Does no research (because no background information will be needed)
or
2) Has a contract that allows all their students to use someone else's library, so they don't need to "waste" money/space on their own library
or
3) It's a party school and no one goes to the library anyway (everything they ever needed to write a paper about is available pre-completed online)
...a university skill, in fact. And no, it is not the same as using Google.
I still have all my university books and notes. I don't need them often, but when I do I find them a great help.
I also still possess the floppies I used in those days, on which are stored all the programming assignments I ever did. Unfortunately I seem to lack the required 5.25" drive I need to read them...
Harddisks crash, magnetic material fades, and formats become obsolete. Paper OTOH is eternal.
Conclusion: utterly stupid decision by that university.
They refuse to purchase any printers.
Besides, nothing (yet) can replace a book you own, a highlighter and a pen for making notes in the margin and taking the whole thing to a study lounge to get away from your roommate's beer party (the sacrifices we make for good grades).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Knowing the bookstores in colleges, they will be able to charge the same wonderfully high prices for books that can be used for only one year.
Personally, I'm broke, and have, on more than one occasion, gone to the library to check out a textbook held on reserve instead of spending $100 for a fucking math (ya, lots of work went into those) text that I will never use again.
That said, consoles and wireless = hella cool, tho I have to wonder about the speed of the network w/a lot of people.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I'm absolutely sure that the students will have much more time to drink beer, but also I'm sure they won't ever be my competitors.
At least, I know how to read books (and if somebody does not know that, the primary knowledge is usually comes from the paper, just because there is no hyperlinks, and you have to read before you've understood that you had to read that before).
--
With Best Wishes,
Constantin
That rumbling noise you hear is the sound of thousands of trucks and U-Hauls delivering printer toner and repair(wo)men to Iowa College.
But I know my local public University (UTD) has subscriptions to all the major online DB's and research orginizations, and has copies of most referance and reserach journels online. Personally I still think there is a lot to be said for the print stuff, but most Universities are already setup for the electronic research and study end, getting rid of the big old textbooks that you have to lug around would be nice though.
How do you reference a paper that is available online only? Ok, there exist some solutions but this should be dealt with in an open and official way (I've heard of a commercial system, but that is dangerous for government funded research, IMHO). Actually, to sollution is quite simple: a commitment from an official entity to keep papers available, logically ordered, and have a lot of mirrors for redundancy.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Things I enjoy about paper:
+ It doesn't crash
+ It rarely loses data
+ 100% availability with proper care
+ Annotations are simple
+ Easy to take with you
+ Content doesn't change
+ Extremely quick access and intuitive interface
+ High resolution/easy on the eyes
Things I don't enjoy about paper:
+ Indexing/searching is tedious
+ Backups can be difficult
Right now, the list of pros/cons favors paper for me. PDAs are starting to reduce some of the cons (i.e. easy to take with you) but still suffer from most of the rest. About the only time a paper document becomes "unavailable" is when it gets lost. Can the same be said for your PC or PDA?
The crisp black-on-white is easy to read. Some LCD panels have text that is pretty easy to read at low resolutions (i.e. 1024x768 at around 100 pixels per inch) but can't touch the level of detail of even a cheap laser printed page of 300 dots (pixels) per inch. Professional typesetting often gets up to 2400 dots per inch. Not even close. This often doesn't matter for text, but what about that detailed network diagram that gets turned to mud at 100dpi. (Don't even get me started on people who use lossy compression on such images...)
Annotations are a given with paper-- just grab a pen and go to town. In the digital world, each and every software package needs to explicitly support annotations in order for this required ability to be present. So far as I know, no major PDF viewer allows one to take notes on it, so off to the printer it goes! (I realize that some PDF authoring software allows this kind of thing. The ones I have seen were masterpieces of overengineering and were correspondingly priced. What's wrong with a basic "notes in the margin" feature included at no cost?)
Until the massive inconveniences of using digital media are resolved, paper will continue to play a dominant role in exchanging and storing information.
As will be reported someday in Unwired:
:wq
Yeah, it was great all right. And such a time-saver too.
I've never heard of said college. I just finished my college search in the CS career a few years back, and never once got refered to even look at them. This leads me to believe it's one of those "get a few credits and transfer" schools, not a real college.
I live in a giant bucket.
Are you refering to Richard Stallman's short "fictional" story on this subject, "The Right to Read"?
cpeterso
Never, never, never ever will I go paperless while Im a college student. Reading page after page of congressional testimony (I'm a poli-sci student) is hard enough without having to read it off a screen. And I dont care how advanced an ipaq screen gets, it will have more eye fatigue than its dead-tree cousin. I took notes in class with a laptop for ONE semester. Then I got tired of dead batteries, sticking keys, and other stuff thats only a mild inconvienence when your not getting tested on the material. Not to mention what a classroom of 300 would sound like with the ticky-tack of keys the whole time. And who gets to sit by the ac plug? No, no no. Never happen for me. I regularly print out hardcopies of electronic sources. For one, Lexis-Nexis doesn't let you bookmark specific articles to peruse later. Dead tree does. Its called a paperclip. Not only that, but I will take my sheaf of printouts anywhere I might have 5 mins to spare. (Study at a party? If its finals week and I need the beer bad enough, you betcha). Plus its really hard to get highlighter off an ipaq. My expirence with paperless education- laptop, lexis-nexis, etc has been that its only useful when paired with real, physical paper.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
so much for anything to actually happen when the power goes...
yeah the Ipaq's have batteries but not the network they would connect to for the libraries of info
that would be a great place to get a contract for UPS systems
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Thanks but no thanks. I would only do this if the book was mine FOREVER.
---rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Really though, paperless has been thrown around for at least a decade or two and it usually just ends up in a jogjam of everyone printing our the hard copies that they were trying to get rid of in the first place. The technology has some good uses, but an all-or-nothing approach will just lead users to revolt.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I grew up in Des Moines. This school is considered a pathetic educational institution that is a haven for rejects. I suspect that this is just a gimmick to look hip. Technology, as great as it is, is no replacement for traditional education.
Have you ever heard of a person being impressed with a degree from U of Phoenix??
Pity someone doesn't redevelop those travel neck cushions so that it can contain most PDA's, so if you have a really horrible and boring lecture (and no real escape) then you can close it up, wear it and avoid those nasty neck cramps while having a nice nap.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
This is cool and all, but it is also one step closer to this.
... piece of shit IPAQ
Infuriate left and right
When *I* was in school I got WAY to many of those fluorescent orange pieces of paper tucked under the windshield wipers of my car; I'd have loved to see them try to go completely paperless!
On a more personal note, despite loving my cel phone and having an apartment full of blinking lights, I still do not have a Palm and I won't be getting one. My Filofax is still much more flexible than any Palm et al I have seen, and it doesn't freak out if dropped.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Yeah, things like Maple/Mathmatica and Tex are nice and all, but I get all of my serious thinking done on paper. I generally turn to such systems only when I need to solve hairy differential equations or when I am typing up a paper. I suppose I might be able to survive with a tablet and some sort of simple sketching program, but you still can't beat the stability and user friendliness of good old fashioned bleached wood pulp and graphite shaft.
My $.02
BlackGriffen
Does this mean that students won't be able to sit in the courtyards and do their homework, amongst sunlight and friends? Without laptops, yes, it does. And that's lame. One thing I like about going to college was that you could sit outside, where its calm out, and just talk with people while you do your homework or read or whatever.
Forcing students to buy microsoft software in
order to get their education would be a
travesty.
On the other hand, most of the static content like books, journals etc. are better read offline.
I am surprised that people keep repeating paperlessness as some kind of an Utopian goal. Not using paper might reduce the number of trees that are felled, but switching off computers saves power! Who's to decide which is a more worthy goal?
All your favorite sites in one place!
Can anyone find me a good and complete introductory chemistry or physics online texbook? They probably exist, but what about online quantum physics, statistical mechanics, molecular biology, complex analysis or more of the advances science books. Most of the good information on the internet is related to computing or focuses on a very specific research topic (such as research group pages that can be found at every large institution's webpage). Until I'm able to easily (and as costless as using a library) find these types of textbooks, I will fear any campus that doesn't have a library.
This is a bit off-topic, but I know I could never completely give up paper. I mean I can type faster than I can write, but there is something about the free-form abilities of paper that make it so much better for taking notes. Handhelds come closer to addressing this problem, but I still feel that paper just WORKS for notes, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
I can see why they want to go paperless. I was just through Iowa a few weeks ago, and they've completely decimated their timber forest.
That also explains the corn cobs in the gas station restrooms, I'd wager.
Now, lets have bush raise the school budget to 150 billion from the little tiny 20 billion that it is, (currently we spend 400 billion and rising per year on the military)
I dont see why schools need paper in this day and age, I dont know if ebooks are the answer, I actually would prefer the use of digital paper and smart boards
SmartBoard Technology
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
People reading this site filming Girls Gone Wild videos? Maybe having more time to watch them....
Paperless information allows better distribution. This is proven with the success of the world wide web, file sharing, etc.
What we need to do is get rid of chalk boards and use smartboards, get rid of traditional books and use ebooks, make the information free, produce digital paper so people can download an ebook into an actual book and read it, of course publishers wont like the file sharing community sharing books but its going to happen so get ready for free information and books for all once digital paper is released.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I find that about 2/3 of the students elect to purchase the book even though it has nothing more than the online material - indeed - the graphics aren't even animated (although there is a CD with simulators and movies).
As one student told me - the book seldom has a glare problem, never flickers, and you can read it in the bath.
It is good to have the material on-line - but there is still a place for "ink-on-pulped-wood" as a transport media. Just because you can do it solely on-line doesn't mean that you should
I am not talking about the physical presence of the book, or the convenience of flipping the pages, or the romance of the printed page. Though I grew up with the miles of indexes at the library, and the rows of computer manuals at the computer lab, I transitioned quite happily to central searchable databases and online help. What I am talking about is the sheer quantity of information a student is required to assimilate and fact that all the information needed is never in one place. My desk was generally littered with books to read and resources needed to complete assignments. While having all of this on computer would have been nice, I can't imagine having to read 100 pages a day at screen resolution, or have to flip from screen to screen to find the right information.
On the other hand, I would have killed to have all the classic English, math, and science texts at my fingertips. If all the resources were remotely and wirelessly accessible, that would be way cool. I can see the benefit of not having to search for that one table needed to finish the problem. Manually searching for table is no longer a needed skill. But still, no books at all? I fear for the students eyesight.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
- Support costs will go through the roof.
- Likewise, most likely, with power costs.
- If I was a petty thief reading slashdot, guess where I'd be enrolling right now? And you thought campus bicycle thefts were bad.
- I must be old fashioned, but the idea of reading everything on a handheld instead of out of a book gives me a headache already. I've used an iPaq, and even though it has a great screen, I'm not sold on eBooks quite yet. In fact, as the article mentions, printing costs are anticipated to go up as people find this out. How exactly is this going to save paper?
I am very supportive of tech in education. However, I don't think we're there yet in terms of paperless college campuses. This almost sounds like a propoganda move prompted by a grant from a huge backer.- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Braindead College.
Or can anyone here explain how they would get
e-book versions of older books like Zariski's "Commutative Algebra", Bourbaki's "Analysis" etc. ?
Technology without meaning.
It's important to recognize that the college in question is a community college. In many respects community colleges are largely paperless anyway; for example, many (most?) don't have their own libraries.
There's no danger of research universities going paperless.
This is from my Alma Matter:
http://www.d.umn.edu/cse/techreq.html
It requires students in Science and Engineering to purchase IPAQs and extra junk in order to register for classes. The University had tried to require laptops for students, but all EE, CS and ECE students already had several and didn't want to be told what to buy. The laptop deal went to a sutdent vote and failed miserably. This IPAQ initative was never sent to a vote - the chancellor saw the almighty $$ and students had no vote.
I was lucky to graduate before this requirement was imposed. I think it is the school's plan to eventually require all students to purchase this at an inflated price. I am sure some UMD are reading this right now - Do you feel that these PDA's are helping you with your educational experience?
In the professional setting these are great for keeping track of apointments and emails but are not much good for anything else. I am curious how they are getting worked into the cirriculum.
"Sorry teacher my dog ate my IPAQ!"
With the lastest advances in comptuer, e-mail, and e-whatever use on campuses has prompted the computer-age equivalent of "my dog ate it" excuses. All I hear from people is:
"oh my e-mail isn't working"
"my computer crashed"
"my printer doesn't have ink"
"the network is down"
The problem is that these things happen frequently as well so they cannot be just passed off as an excuse. Sure, with the load on school websites around midterm and final time, it is plausible the server might have been inaccessible. So what do you do? Hold it against the student? You can't because of circumstance. Now with this entire e-book thing which I can't stand. I've done a lot of research and sure using an online database to help search the card catalog is nice but reading books online is a drag. Let's face it, staring at a computer screen is far more fatiguing than staring at a book. I want access to both the e-book and the hardcopy. Lastly, I am not shelling out a couple hundred bucks for an iPaq nor am I carrying my laptop on campus. I already have enough to carry and a laptop + charger doesn't help anything. The iPaq is just too much money and I don't see much use for it since I can do everything on my laptop. I bought a Palm pilot when they first came out many years ago. Other than checking for an occassional phone number, I never use the thing. Its a waste of money for me. Sure I see my friends trying to make good use of theirs by sitting their and struggling with the stylus on the same stuff that would take me 1/3 the time.
Bottom line, computer equipment needs to be more reliable, the networks need to be able to take the strain, and PDAs need to come down in price.
Once you sudo, run rm -rf /.
Then reboot with the Windows CD in the drive and begin the install process.
HTH.
Using Microsoft
To get an education
Is a travesty
Actually they can convert all books they have to computer media, and OCR new books as they come in, making them searchable resource. It is draconian, but would reduce search times by magnitude.
You can store scanned images that relate to the book, that related to specific row in image, so
they can look and see if there are pictures
and other things in the book.
Hollywood movie shows did have some of those "image" text scanners, which are not vialble, but when armed with pre-translated text indexes, can become really useful. And library can be online for students. One thing stopping all that is absence of software, and effort to scan all the books properly.
For one thing you can get students to do scanning for few extra credis, software can be a project of under- and graduate students, so can be hardware,like page scanners if not available commercially already.
2c.
It isn't "Iowa College", there is no "Iowa College", it's DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College), pronounced DEE-MACK.. Ok I'm sure none of you care but I'm from Iowa and this whole notion is downright offensive. (insert corn jokes here)
My eyes get sore after a certain amount of time staring at a computer screen... if I had to do all my studying/reading/working on computer screens (of various sizes/shapes) I would kill my eyesight. Especially since the iPaq's are way smaller than your average text book. I think the graduating class will all have squints.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Girl's Gone Wild website
i can see going part paperless. but what happenes whan the kids leave school? I still to this day look back at my text books and notes from class for some info. No one can remeamber it all (at lest not me). S do the kids get to take the computers with theam? do the get full access to the schools data base for the rest of there lives (at the cost of some collages this should be)? ------ And the big one how will a teacher know if a kid is wirelessly sending data to anouther student ? humm this would have been usefull to bring my gpa up
Student: Hi, I have 300 copies of Postmodernism for Dummies to sell back.
Clerk: Hey, aren't you the guy we bought 500 copies from yesterday?
Student: No sir, that was my roommate. The guy in the room next to me should be stopping by later. I advised everyone on my floor to buy a few hundred copies of each book at the beginning of the year. An investment in "e-books" sounded like a good idea at the time. Guess not.
They are going to have to buy a whole lot of printers and increased the students printing quota to answer to the students demands. I believe that most people rather read on paper rather than off a computer screen.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
I cant see this being done very well at all unless they have a collection the size of a small public library, and even then it wouldnt be cost effective.
--aiee
It's a community college, folks, that means SMALL. I'd be more impressed if it was ISU or U of I that did this..and I'm an Iowan! Although the paperless idea is great, I just don't think it can (or ever will) fly. Call me pessimistic, but people just like paper.
why you haven't practiced more; that's really all they're good for. :)
I've had a teacher that has been trying the experiment over a few years. His idea was to type the notes in the computer, and have it go out to different television sets in the classroom. Exams, tests, and quizzes were taken in the computer lab over a web-based program. Essays and papers were turned in via a shared directory. Notes were grabbed from the same directory.
To take your notes, you either bring your laptop to class or jot them down in a notebook.
Taking notes didn't work out so well, because of the teacher's presentation. Watching him type notes on the television and have a discussion didn't work, because the notes were sub-par and the discussion fruitless (he was an English teacher).
But the excellent part of the class was the thrill (or not) of taking your exam and seeing if you passed or not immediately.
It was the best class I've taken for a few reasons:
- Nimda reemed the network and got my class cancelled for a week
- The computer gave the teacher many problems, and usually we'd spend only 15 minutes in discussion
I couldn't read my notes on a computer, I'd much rather write than type. What could be the disadvantages of taking a notebook to class?
And I wonder if they took the different learning styles in mind (auditory, visual, and tangibles)? An electronic classroom definately focuses on visual. Would be interesting to see numbers later on and see if they correlate with the different styles.
I Support Fair Use
its just crazy. it never will be as comfortable to "underline" text on an i-paq or similar thing as it is in a script. in a script you can add small notices whereever you want. i guess it will be a long time till it will be that easy on an i-paq.
if you ask me (which you obviously dont;) its just plain crazy.
Advantages of a book:
- More information is available at once. You have two pages at once easily viewable simultaneously, with hundred's more at the flick of a finger/bookmark/pen/what have you. The screen real estate of an ipaq or even a purty 19'' monitor does not compare
- Simply having something physical in front on you is infinitely more engaging than a web page or electronic document. It is my belief that the physical page is viewed by the mind as a real object, and so is given more attention and understood much easier. Also the ability to interact with a said page is engrained in us from birth. We are taught to write at a very early age, and it's a simple matter of fact that writing down something -- notes, equations, cute girl's phone number -- you are more likely to remember it than being merely a spectator at a computer. Highlighters also fall in with this idea. Unless it is extremely easy to make certian sections of the electronic document stand out and quickly scan you simply will not be able to mark any important/central ideas as any more important or central than the other crap. At least effectively.
- Always able to be read. No amount of years and cultures could render the book unreadable (short of a Nazi regime). Which would you rather depend on in times of finals mania? Even in death trees can save a few college careers.
- Collaboration. This one kinda goes along with the amount of information viewable at once. It will be much harder to collaborate around a computer or monitor ( or an ipaq!) and be able to share/analyze ideas or get work done. Think of it this way. Is it easier to work with others and share ideas when using a chalkboard or an IRC chat channel (esp true when the ideas require visualization.)? How about with a piece of paper and a read only display?
Whew. I'm sure there are so many more reasons to keep books. There has to be many other slashdotters that are in college and know exactly what I'm talking about. Perhaps with less mathmatics oriented majors it's not as much of an issue because the material would require less visualization and interaction ( english or medical texts), but I think there is simply know way that I would pass up real books for a differential equations or network analysis class.Colleges take another step down the road toward RMS's distopian future.
For the one or two of you who haven't read his piece:
The Right to Read
I read through the various articles and one point was missed. Why IPaq? Why not a notebook a Palm, a Newton, etc? And yet nobody really said anything about this.
This is a scary notion that an IPaq must be used. it is sort of like saying to study at this college you must drive this car. When I went through engineering we could choose the calculating device so long as it fufilled a certain subset of calculations.
Scary indeed....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Digital Paper/Ink Digital Paper
This new paper, with electronic ink would mean one book could hold all your books. One piece of paper could be your news paper, magazine, even your favorite website. One peice of paper could have all your schoolwork on it.
SympodiumInteractive Lecture technology, This allows students to view the board, as well as move along at their own pace doing their own thing. This would allow a student to learn more due to the class not slowing them down. Its interactive so if a person wants
more detail about something they can get it.
Reason, Logic, Cause and effect.
This is something schools never teach and this is one of the most important things we must teach kids, as well as adults.
Example
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You know...because you're not truely a network administrator without one. Are cell phones required too?
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
instructors write apps to autograde essay paper?
Is this an undergraduate only college? While it might be possible for undergraduates to use digitized versions of their textbooks, it won't be possible for anyone to do much research; it is inevitably necessary to look up research papers, and anything earlier than 1990 is not likely to be available in digital form.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I took a few classes at DMACC (the college mentioned in this article) when I was in High School, alot of them were easier then the classes I was taking in High School. I don't think removing all the papers on campus is going to make it any better, what they need, is academic standards.
--
http://www.dennistighe.com
me either, books have no downtime, cause less eyestrain and are generally easier to read
/.
at least for me
a pc w/ a net connection provides far too many distractions, as evidenced by this post as i have other shit i'm suppopsed to be doing instead of reading and replying to
but i much prefer to read a paper book than an e-book. I find it less stressful on my eyes. I don't want to be squinting at my computer/Palm screen ALL the time. I'd rather carry my K&R C book to bed for some (not really) pleasure reading, than hotsynch it to my Palm and bring it up with me.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
just two gripes
1) as far as i know, Lib still contairs *much* more information than
a) the web
b) whatever online lib you can come up with
c) e-book collections
2) now your library is limited to the number of workstations -- "sorry bud, i know you have an exam tomorrow, but we are simply out of workstations right now"
* note to (2) i know a bunch of you will immediately attempt to point out that you can access this stuff at home -- but most propriatory acedemic stuff is quite copyrighted, and you need to be at the lib to access them, even today. (journal databases, a lot of e-books, for example)
3) have anyone ever tried to read a map on a computer screen? it's rediculous how much time you waste on zoom unzoom pan-left pan-right. instead, in the dead-tree version, all the info is right there. you get your high-res view in one fell swoop. same goes with a lot of other big-sheet stuff. why do you think we have plotters for the archetechture kiddiez? sure -- autoCAD makes it easy to *draw* the building, but it's on huge blueprint paper when it really makes sense.
4) iPaq aside -- i would not want to stare at screens all day. it is
a) bad for your eyes
b) i can't study in bed, or on the toilet (cenveniently) -- and we all know men't greatest enlightments are achieved on the throne. (like the FluxCapacitor)
c) iPaq has shitty resolution for any research i want to do; hell, QXGA screen? wtf? i am using dual UXGA and *still* need more desktop space.
5) i lied about the two gripes thing
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Okay, I have no sympathy for this kind of technology usage, but did students learn better (more effectively or faster)? Did it help anyway? I think this is the big question. Did they think about measuring this or just making an appealing press release?
Built a EMP device and put it in the trash can in the middle of the quad. Set for lunch time. Watch the fun!
Be sure to record results with pen a paper for extra credit!
Now textbooks are another issue...the disadvantages most definitely out weigh any possible benefits of a paperless environment. This is especially the case for technical texts where it is common for students to add personal notes and comments into their textbooks. Therefore that $100 I spent on my aerodynamics text was not just because my class required it, but was an addition to my personal reference library.
Ideally, it would best to have everything in paper and electronic media. Look up what you want electronically and perform detailed research with both paper and electronic media
Why buy a laptop? Digital Paper can store and display your information at a fraction of the price.
Of course its good to have a laptop, but digital paper would be far more useful.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The whole idea of "paperless" is a sham... I read some statistic a while ago that since e-mail has been introduced into offices, paper use has gone UP, since a lot of people would print out their e-mails. I don't know about everyone else, but whenever I get a lengthy reading assignment online in one of my classes, first thing I do is print it up on my laser printer and find a quiet spot to read. If I'm on my computer, I generally don't have enough discipline to shut down instant messenger, my mp3 player, and all the other apps I run as distractions in the background.
Another problem with the whole iPaq thing: battery life. If you're reading a book that takes more than a few hours to finish, you've got a problem! (Especially if you've got a wireless card or some power-sucker plugged in). From my own observations, a lot of people don't read near outlets all the time.
Off the top of my head:
1) Not every resource may be available online. The best, most complete textbooks may not have e-versions. Think Aho/Ullman and Patterson/Hennessey, to pick two CS examples.
2) Paper is an excellent medium for collaborating and revising. E.g., handing in a draft paper and getting it back with comments in ink. Having graded source code as an undergrad, I can say marking up a text file is not as efficient or easy to read.
3) YMMV, but looseleaf paper is also an extraordinarily flexible medium for taking notes. Especially in math courses where the symbols and syntax are not easily input. (MathML? Mathematica? LaTeX? None as easy as a pencil and paper.)
This is an example of an institution's desperation to seem ahead of the curve eclipsing common sense.
Instead of trying to use an IPaq, they should just wipe their asses with dickheads like you!
This makes more sense when you know that the West Campus is the "Tech Campus" They do not offer traditional college courses at this campus. If you look at the courses offered at this campus you will note that a large percentage begin with M$.
If you actually want to learn stuff, or if you plan to have children, those books will be VERY useful later on.
Lets assume you want to become a programmer, you can learn C and C++ in college, keep the book and use that book later when you need a refrence.
Lets say you have kids, and you took a class like say, discrete math in college, lets say your kids have an interest in math.
Well, you have the math books right there.
Books are always useful until we come to the day where digital paper and ebooks rule all, when we get to that point, expect bookster to be released and dominate the file sharing world. Free information for all.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I am an engineering student, but I love to read. Her insights (especially while reading Ulysses) are wonderfully helpful to someone who has a limited knowledge of literature. To boot, I have something that I can really associate with my mother about.
There's something intangible about picking up a 30-year old copy of your favourite novel and knowing that 5 or 6 other people have enjoyed it as well. This might seem sappy, but reading something from a monitor (or even from the screen of an iPaq) just doesn't have the same soul as reading from paper. It's the same reason why the National Post (a Canadian newspaper, eh?) will ALWAYS be better than The National Post.
Let's keep books of literature and education alive and relegate more soul-less forms of communication (like porn) to the computer world.
Windside
--------
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
not quite as disturbing as GGW, but my friend and i are starting:
FSUhotties.com!!
------
[insert funny
One bright spot could be giving access to technology that many students might not other wise get, at say a DMACC or another community college. The long term effect could be less user errors in the near future.
Is it too good to be true?!
Harvard always has the newest books.Consider the fact that most people who go to Harvard have much more money than you.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So instead of running around and burning the dorms, would a college riot involve geeks with HERF guns threatening to wipe out the library unless they get a week to play Nethack?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Most of the people who get laid alot, are also the least intelligent part of the human population.
I suggest you learn more, and find a nice girl, instead of just worrying about getting laid and having sex all the time.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This would be really useful at our college.. we have course materials online, grades, etc. It cuts down on a lot of wasted resources (time, paper, etc). I can't help but wonder if eBooks gain more popularity, what kinds of implications DRM, etc will have at libraries and colleges. If even CDs can now contain EULA's, it seems a little scary to think what could be done with eBooks. Hopefully, though, I am just being way too paranoid.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Like most people, I agree that electronic versions of documents are a great idea for quick text searches. However, most resources are not available electronically and many people still do not rely on electronic copies or devices.
Furthermore, most people are used to working with paper and cannot be expected to shift their habits entirely to a "paperless" environment. As a result, I would expect many to be in constant search of a printer to print online texts for later reference. And if printers weren't available in this "paperless" environment, where would I get my free scrap paper supply on campus?Rapidly approaching the Zener knee...
Most community colleges have smaller libraries than can be found at 4 year institutions. The arcticle states that the media center offers resources on the web, e-books, and online journals. These resources may be comparable to the resources offered by other community colleges.
What is the difference if I'm looking at a paper copy of Journal xyz or an online version of the journal? The online version is most likely going to be the more reliable version. Nothing is more frustrating than tracking down some journal article only to find the page(s) you want ripped out. That is not going to happen with online journals.
When physical space becomes an issue moving to digital resources makes sense. It is costly to add on to the existing library to house additional paper books, paper journals, etc. But adding Online Journals, e-books, etc. to a library will require less space.
Can you read your iPAQ when the battery is dead? I can't. And as good as my iPAQ is for some things, that screen is just too damned small for reading.
I much prefer books. You can annotate the hell out of them. Books don't crash. Books don't have issues with "alternate" operating systems. Books aren't subject to the whims of some funky piece of software that might just decide to stop working.
And most importantly, when was the last time you replaced the missing leg on that old couch with an iPAQ?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
This is a Community College!!
Besides that, it's a Suburban Campus!!!
You'd think that this was Fahrenheit 451
It sounds like a Microsoft training camp -- Gates's Youth? (Jungvolk?)
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Learning how to learn doesnt happen in college, This happens usually in highschool when you either do well in their style of teaching or you teach yourself.
Competition is not as good as Cooperation.
There is no such thing as a smartest person of the world, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, each person is a genius in some areas and just damn slow in others. There are of course people who are well rounded, but those people usually major in liberal arts and become teachers who then try to teach students to be well rounded.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This actually brings up a substantial point. There are a large number of people who do not feel comfortable reading on a computer screen. They retain less information off the screen, and the experience is less desirable. Many people print out web pages - they feel more comfortable reading over physical pages. I think this has two sources: the hardware and the sensation.
CRT computer screens are not the easiest thing to read from. They are stressful on the eyes and, especially when combined with fluorescent lights, produce a flickering image, no matter how subtle. Also, CRTs aren't very convenient for very casual or very involved reading, as they tend to be completely fixed in location. LCDs are easier on the eyes, though this may depend upon whom you ask. Desktop LCDs are still adhered to one spot, but laptops break this boundary. You can sit on the couch, lie in bed, take them virtually anywhere a book can go, and read. It isn't a book, but it's a far sight closer than a desktop computer. Of course, that's where the sensation comes in.
When you read, there are certain parts of the experience that play on your senses. Not only can you see the words, but you can instantly guage how far you have come and how far you have to go by looking at the thickness of the book to either side. You may equate this with the scrollbar, or a percentage indicator, but it isn't the same. You can feel the remaining quantity as you read. You can bookmark passages as you read and look back instantly at how many bookmarks you have made. The nature of the book allows you to see how far apart the marks are, the overall density, and the volume of the marks. All this is simple visual acuity that comes pre-programmed (or socially programmed, depending on your views) into our brains. There are not only visual clues, but tactile ones as well to the progress of the book. You may also assign qualitative values to the book based upon the binding and the paper's texture and scent. These things are not found on the screen, nor can they be. Moby Dick has the same value as Green Eggs and Ham when are staring at representative icons.
Perhaps that is a major addition that eBooks need - descriptive icons. Moby Dick may have a thick, dark, leather-bound, strapped volume for the icon where Green Eggs and Ham would be slim, sharp-edged, and bright orange, as it should. If a sufficiently comfortable inerface could be acheived, more people might take to reading eBooks. I do not suggest, however, that we should model the interface after real books. The computer offers us many freedoms that printed voumes do not, and we should take every advantage of them.
There is something to be said for a physical book. There is an involement in a book that is hard to transition to a computer. I have read everything from Science Fiction to Shakespeare in physical text and on the screen of my laptop. There is a positive quality difference to reading with a book. But there are advantages to electronic texts. I can reach a specific point without flipping through chapters. I can search for a quote or a passage. I can carry hundreds of books with me instead of four or five for the same weight. I can read in bed without a separate light source.
And I can learn to appreciate the value of the information over it's presentation.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
What happens to bed-time reading? None of the devices I've seen so far are comfortable to fall asleep with...
Also, I don't believe all of the decent content is available in digital form. May be, it is good to have the course materials paperless -- the new content, but the libraries should still carry the old texts.
Finally, sometimes the pure knowledge, that a book you are holding was printed and first read 100-200 years ago can be quite exciting and thought provoking... Not even a reprint would do that, forget an electronic gizmo :-)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Per student numbers such as those do not work, because its not evenly distributed money.
Kids in richer areas, get the majority of the money because they pay more taxes. Raising the federal budget helps the people who arent living in rich communities or suburbs.
Have you ever went to new york or some city and looked at the schools there? They are crappy as hell. The solution is to raise the federal budget, or change the method of distribution so that its perfectly even to all schools.
Per student does not work for schools, it does however work for the military because the military protects all cities and neighborhoods, even yours.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I think that for some applications it's just fine -- nobody really needs to see all my archived emails a hundred years from now (though I'm sure it would be interesting to my progeny to learn about me), but what about the research and scientific understanding in our colleges and universities? We ought to do SOMETHING to preserve our knowledge. Maybe inscribe it in stone or metal and send it off to the moon or somewhere, I dunno.
I think going paperless is good. But I think the paper trail to our history should be replaced instead of just chucked out the window. Something for long-term storage of our archived electronic information would be fine -- but it should be in a format that we are sure will be readable in the future.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
That's about all they're good for.
Am I the only one who could see the ability for the really devious and intelegent students to alter their grades, and other nice little things that will not be seen on hardcopy? Come to think of it, the thought of having your grades e-mailed automaticly to the parental units makes a great deal of sense.. With read recipts there will be no more of this "I didn't get them" garbage..
Spend all day on an iPaq = drained battery. ...
Is that the new excuse for not being able to take a test? "Sorry, my battery is dead"
A lot of dotcoms have gone paperless. No checks, no cash.
Anyone who has tried to read a book on a computer monitor (or a PDA for that matter) quickly discovered the shortcomings, and there are many.
How many people find that their usual position for comfortable computing is the same as the one for comfortable reading?
How many people prefer the manuals for their software to be in PDF only?
Going paperless is admirable in applications where electronic is superior to paper and idiotic when it is inferior.
I wonder if this will make it easier to catch the rampant (and pretty stupid) cheating out there-don't have to scan or type in suspicious passages.
Considering how much of my garage floor is filled with 15 year old books from College that I haven't looked at since getting out, an iPaq would have been a good idea.
Okay, I could dump the books, but after spending $80.00+ a pop (Back then) and losing countless hours of my life beating my head against them in a vain attempt to understand Maxwell's equations, I just can't bear to throw them out.
The school plans to be an entirely paper-free campus.
That is not very real-world training. The boss will hand them hand-scribbled notes on a paper reports, and the graduate will reply, "Can you retype your notes into Word, by chance? I am not used to this medium."
They won't even know what the pink-slip is that will then be handed to them.
Table-ized A.I.
I Paq U.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
I go to college, and I can't stand the ridiculously high prices I have to pay for school books. I would love an e-book version, w/ the cost significantly lower, the ability to carry all my books around all the time, and the search capabilities. I don't feel this is appropriate for everyone, but I would certainly try it.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
This "Iowa College" is just a single branch of Des Moines Area Community College--emphasis on the community college part. What's more, the branch is in West Des Moines so the students taking classes there can take classes at the main branch (West Des Moines, as you might expect, borders Des Moines) or any of the other four branches with no real hassle. Apparently this branch is going to cater to those just taking tech classes for work or to get a degree that will get them the above-mentioned job pulling cable so they can stop working at the Hy-Vee. Really, with the public libraries and main branch library so close to the students, it seems kind of silly to build a separate library just for this campus--so they decided to become "paperless" and capitalize on the ensuing publicity.
At least, that's my bet. So don't be alarmed that books are going to be disappearing from colleges and universities, and don't mistake this for the beginning of a revolution in education. It's just a clever marketing spin on the fact that building a separate West Des Moines branch library would be redundant and a waste of funding.
"Someone somewhere had to wear pants for the first time. The meek and indecisive do not change our world." -Montville
Can you read your iPAQ when the battery is dead?
You can bet that exams will be on paper. After hacking or a power outage people will change their mind. (However, incremental backups are technically feasible of course.)
::Imagines a floppy disk with a .pdf document on it being handed over to each student at graduation::
I sure wouldn't want to use the restrooms there....
So now we know where all the ex-dot-com "business idea planners" went.
Table-ized A.I.
is this a bong only school now?
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Paperless good. Paperless plus good. Paper can stick around, carrying un-information. Paperless makes it easier for the Ministry of Truth to remove references to unpersons, and to change unfacts when they are no longer true.
With new paperless media like DVD-ROM and Ebook and the DMCA, it is already a federal crime to circumvent the Ministry's control over information. Once the DVD player expires, or the rights-managed usage grant expires, then it will be a crime to circumvent protections in order to access un-information. Downloaded music from PressPlay will all die when PressPlay does. It becomes un-music! You'll have to buy the next big star they want to sell you!
Paperless good! Long live Big Brother!
I've used a Newton and more recently a Jornada 720 for taking all of my notes and a lot more at school. I would love to have electronic versions of my textbooks rather than sticking with the expensive and bulky papers ones I have now. Where can I get e-textbooks instead of regular ones? What do they cost? Do they have a decent selection?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
will the thievery ever end? the horror!!!
"Students have required two things: They want mobile access to everything and, No. 2, they
want media-rich content," Paustian said.
on #2, is this code for "embed Star Wars trailers into boring accounting 101 texts"?
There will still be plenty of rolling papers.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Well at least they can't give you the "its used and therefore in worse condition" excuse for not giving you anything for your sellbacks...but they again that means you can't buy used books!!! Noooooooooo! How are we supposed to afford this!! and what about books you may want to keep?? Frankly, I like having a Calculus and Differential Equations reference to take with me after I leave skool, just in case I ever need to use them. And I don't want to carry a laptop with me everywhere I go in order to study! One of the best ways to get cramming done is to lay out in the grass on a sunny day and read away! I want my paper back!
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
Seriously, I wish someone would do a study on the least eye straining method of text and picture display (I suppose moving stuff too). Things like size, color, contrast, font, etc.
has any one tried those 'e-book' readers? are they easy on the eyes? is there enough material for it yet?
In this case, DMACC does have a library -- but not at this location. As stated by others, this is only one location of a fairly widespread community college (they have classes at an urban campus, the main campus is in a neighboring city, and the West Des Moines campus is a new addition). In other words, while this specific location may have a tech library, it's not necessary.
..leaves out the word "an."
Ideally it should read "An Iowa college has gone paperless," but due to some bad choices in titling, some people may interpret it otherwise.
Theres just something about paper, you need paper to right down ideas in your head etc....also computers can be such a distraction in the classroom with all the other goodies on them etc...I just can't see it, I'm always on a computer, and at work i still go through paper like crazy writing stuff down
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
Each student used a Compaq iPaq handheld to access e-textbooks, syllabi and class materials, and to take notes and exams.
I could take notes at DMACC on an etch-a-sketch.
I would hate trying to take notes with an iPaq.
I mean, not that I ever take notes anyway, but still.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is a pretty clear indication that the decision was made to go electronic before any reasonable assessment was made of whether the necessary course materials were actually available in that format.
Did the college factor in the cost of developing their own textbooks into their calculation of the overall cost of this initiative?
Did they pause to consider that maybe their students would benefit more from having the best course materials available for use, regardless of format?
The observation that "students prefer to look things up online" is irrelevant. Part of a decent post-secondary education is learning how to locate the best source of information available, which isn't always the most convenient source.
Corn-bred Stupid.
My concern arises from the fact that most scientific journals don't have their pre-199x back-issues digitized. Most have their old abstracts online, but when it comes to full-text articles, most of the subject-specific journals simply don't go back far enough. As an example, look at the journal "Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton", whose full-text electronic archives don't go back any further than 1996 or so.
JStor and a few other databases have done admirable jobs at breaking the pre-1990 barrier, but only for a very few titles.
Well, so, what should Giles do in such university without a library? bad news, bad news... ;)
Also on wired (and greplaw for that matter) is the mention that the school intends to introduce thumbprint scanners for security purposes. (http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,53912,00. html)
Having your thumbprint taken at the beginning of the semester will be compulsory. I'm not entirely sure I'd want my thumbprint in a subphoenable database for all time because of where I went to school..
so is there anyone who actually thinks that this is a *good* idea?
But I guess if you're a student you can get used to it- just sleep less. Once you've hit the age where all-nighters aren't possible anymore (not without getting a bad cold the next day), the all electronic office proposals can be a horror. I've met several Sun employees who still shudder at the virtual desk idea: same problems as the parent poster said. And it isn't just engineers who need to have multiple projects visible at the same time and/or overnight without having to clear their desk.
E-Books are like E-Jobs -- they don't feel "real" to most people.
Case in point -- I work for GameSpy Industries, doing writing, editing, and management. However, their offices are located in Irvine, California. This is quite a daily commute from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. The solution? Telecomutting.
However, people don't seem to quite grasp the fact that, even though I'm at home, I'm still working. My mother asks me to do housework, people say "dammit Cary, get a real job".. and I make almost 3x as much as they do at their real McJobs.
I imagine that the e-book situation is quite similar -- because there is no tactile book to hold, it isn't "real". (I've been told that, if I had to go to an office but still telecommute, then I have a real job.
like in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age or a thinner, cheaper, tablet notebook with better hand-writing recognition. Software also needs to exist where any document can be edited with, say, circled or highlighted text, with some kind of tactile interface--hopefully a pen. I am not opposed to the paperless classroom but we can't lose the functionality that current dead trees offer.
Girls.Gone.Wild.Dormroom.Fantasies.3.apoctreble.mp eg is now out! Grab it today from your local warez dealer.
Note to self: Do *not* ever think of attending Iowa College. /., but eliminating the *library*??? That's madness.
Look, I'm as big a technology advocate as anyone here on
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
I've been reading on the palm for a couple years now, and I have to say, it's a about a billion times more efficent than paper. Back lighting, annotation and just always having the book handy are the 3 top features for me.
I just finished the _Fellowship of the Ring_ last night. I thought I had read it in grade school, but I guess not! What a freaking GREAT story!
Having the book on your palm makes it accessable everywhere. I always have my palm, so I always have my book. I dunno if it'll get the 'non-reader' into it, but it's at least doubled the number of books I go through.
I'm 'syncing' some Sherlock Holmes right now, which I would probably never have read if it wasn't for the e-version.
Check out www.memoware.com, for lots of free e-text classics, and www.peanutpress.com for some contemporary stuff, which you'll have to pay for.
If you've got a PDA, and you don't have a book or two on it, your wasting a really great resource. If anything, you'll spend more time on the throne at the office.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Skylarov was the first to be brought up on charges for circumventing the protection for books. Expect more troubles to come if the best source for learning (books!) are primarily on digital media... The move toward highly restrictive licensing instead of outright ownership of information will likely lead to information only being retained by multi-national corporations. Just wait and see, or write your congressmen/senator and stop the loss of your rights.
A semi-paperless campus could succeed today. Assuming that there is a lot of free (as in Gutenberg) college-course-caliber reading material on the net, a university could assign many of its books as free downloads and provide a convenient cost-of-materials printing service for those who want it. Said prints would be available in the library and used bookstore to minimize reprinting, and recyclable once worn beyond legibilty. As long as the university completely avoids DRMs and maintains a bookstore and library for the 90+% of reading material still only in print, they could start a good trend.
It's in the university's interest: going semi-paperless would save money for a big tuition hike!
Another advantage is that they could require only the passages actually used in the courses. College courses today frequently assign books over 1000 pages and only use 50 to 100 of them.
So there's another gain for the university: Fewer students would go to the clinic for back problems, so there's money for a second tuition hike!
Amen brother. I have actually read several books from my trusty monitor, and by the end I was amazed I could still see. Until we get 'digital paper' it will be a while before I can truly get into an e-book
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
So much for grad students checking out books for research.
Penn State had so many PEBCAK problems between the departments and the bursar's office that I would have never grad-a-tuted if I didn't have paper copies of transcripts. Amazingly they always found the 'computer' errors after I showed hard copies of shit I printed out the semester before. Thank you PSU.
Paperless reading is supposed to save the environment, but how much more coal and oil will we burn to run our PCs longer? To save power, will Iowa College buy lots of LCDs? Reflective or backlit? How about OLEDs?
The day of the paperless office will arrive the day after the day of the paperless toilet.
Last year, about 75 telecommunications students participated in a pilot program to go paperless.
Considering that telecommunications majors can't read or write anyway...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Why fill your car with petrol, just use nuclear fusion, it's clean and the consumables are a fraction of the cost.
Oh wait, we should, like, invent those things first.
is SYLLABUSES. Not syllabi. Just as the plural of virus is viruses. Viri would be a logical conclusion, but two Is ('virii')? Pur-lease!
er, rant over.
Hmm. Perhaps 2096 is a bit too far in the future for The Road To Tycho.
In the UK about 15-ish years ago all schools in Britain took part in the new Domesday project where information was gathered about the places we live. It was stored on laser disc. Now there aren't any laser disc readers around to read the data and it's effectively useless.
Lets also not forget that there is real concern about the transitory nature of the web. Old sites go and never return, what will have to show our grandchildren about the beginnings of the web?
What will happen to the data from the University library, the students Ipaqs (or similar computers).
All these digital storage ideas are great as an addition to paper but they require another piece of equipment to read it, whereas good ole paper and ink just requires eyes!
as an aside (if they're taking notes on their ipaq I hope the lecturer is talking really slowly - inputing anything with a stylus is so monumentally slow)
finding the International Steam Tables in an e-book.
Besides, how will students masturbate in the bathrooms? Will there be terminals there?
But, my god, how can anyone argue with the economics of the situation. Pay $100 once?
Even though a CD-R costs well under a dollar (except in Canada, which taxes the crap out of them), that still doesn't change the fact that the author of the textbook needs to get paid. Say a textbook costs $10 to replicate (figure pulled out of my behind). Good. Now instead of costing $99.95 per copy, an electronic textbook will cost $90.15 per copy ("please insert the original CD and plug in the USB dongle").
I was reading a book the other night, that's been mostly out of print since the 1800's. Great book, but damn hard to find, even to order a copy online.
Was it on Project Gutenberg? If so, you've just showed the value of a rich public domain. Now go to eldred.cc and donate to a legal fund dedicated to making sure it stays that way.
Will I retire or break 10K?
and I have to pay (through the ass - tuition) to use [library books].
What about libraries at state colleges? They're quite a bit cheaper than private schools.
And what about public libraries?
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's with cleartype and a refresh rate of 115
Incandescent lighting typically does not convert AC to DC before sending it to the filament, so you get 100 (Europe) or 120 (America/Japan) blinks per second, one for maximum voltage and one for minimum voltage.
That is, unless you were talking about reading by sunlight? That doesn't help during the winter quarter.
Will I retire or break 10K?
the college in question is a community college
Chris Rock on community colleges:
Will I retire or break 10K?
MLA and APA both have citations set up for online documents.
What if someone were to drop an EMP in Iowa? All of those students would lose all of their credits because there would no longer be any record of it.
Lot's of luck with that project Iowa, but this /. reader thinks it's only circling the drain.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
As a teacher I find the greatest problem of a paperless campus is where to give the students feedback. Writting a quick note on an assignment is a lot easier than opening up another dialog box and referencing a line in a document. For reading and composing assignments paperless does work. For grading and commenting on the completed work. Paper does a much better job.
I don't know how this tradition got started, kind of like a penguin dropping a rock in front of potential mate, but here are some of the things a diamond ring is good for:
- Intent. A guy may tell you he loves you and wants to marry you, but if he actually goes out and buys a diamond ring, you can surmise that he's serious.
- Security. The fact that he can afford to buy this ring, and he's willing to buy it, indicates he's a good provider, and generous, and that there will be more goodies where this came from.
- Attachment. When you start wearing the ring, it's a sign that you're "taken" and for all other guys to back off, especially after you get the matching wedding ring.
- Status. Size matters. People notice. When a girl gets engaged, her friends surreptitiously compare the size of her ring with theirs and others'.
- Insurance. An engaged woman may quit her job, sell her home, move to another area, etc. to prepare for the marriage. Her family begins wedding preparations. So if the guy breaks off the engagement, she gets to keep the ring, compensating for some of her costs, inconvenience and embarrassment, not to mention the lost opportunity of looking for another, more suitable mate during the engagement.
- Beauty. Finally, all the mystique of how beautiful, sparkly and everlasting a diamond is.
It's worth noting that plenty of people find lasting happiness with or without marriage, with small diamonds, no diamonds, rubies instead of diamonds, etc., but I wouldn't recommend trying it with a fake diamond.One of the nice things about a textbook is once the course is over, you will have an excellent reference. Assuming the text is used alot, you will have communed with it and when you need to, you can quickly find the answer to a question. E books tend to disappear once the course is over. You have nothing but your notes. E books perhaps have a place in courses where the knowledge being diseminated will be obsoleted quicky but for a math or english course, where syllabus seldom changes, they are a raw deal.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
What fraction of books have even been turned into an electronic form?
Do you want your only copy of Dante to have a limited number of plays? Or perhaps be limited in how long you can read it? And then you run out of plays/time just before the final?
Textbook publishers have already complained legally about reselling books that come with an included CD. It seems the rules on the handling of CDs might imply that this could be illegal, though if this has been tested, I don't know about it. Perhaps that was lawyer baffelgab.
I can conceive of circumstances under which this would be a good idea, but it would require a very different legal system, and better hardware, too. As it is, this is a quite bad idea.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
A connected campus is a great idea. A paperless one is both misguided and unrealistic. Not only is there a HUGE legacy of paper materials that wouldn't be cost-effective to digitize, but paper also provides numerous affordances that digital media (at least for now) do not. Looks like someone over there needs to read The Myth of the Paperless Office. Oh, wait. I forgot, they won't have any books. At least there's a lot of online material about the challenges of digital preservation that they might want to peruse.
The problem with used books is this:
The author writes the book. The publishing company pays the author, then prints the book. The pub company gives your prof a free copy to review for adoption, then your prof sells his _free_ copy to the used book dealer. So you think you're getting a GREAT deal on a used book, when in fact, you are paying for that book twice when you can't get a used copy of another book and have to buy a new one. I would rather have a MUCH cheaper book that a prof can't resell than be able to resell my outrageously expensive new textbook for a pittance. Pub companies (in general) really want to contribute to education AND make a profit. Book dealers (in general) just want to make a profit.
Having said all that. I'm not sure what the solution is. Respect for others' labors? A conscience? College students in general seem to have very little respect for copyright or "IP."
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
People in expensive areas have enough money to put their kids in private schools, buy their kids books and computers etc.
The cost of living is high everwhere so lets not even go there, however the cost of education is too great for the average working class parent, they cannot afford private school, they cannot afford tutors, they cannot afford the things needed to help a kid do well in a bad school.
However, a rich person with a kid in a bad school can easily afford on their own to educate their kids, even take them out of public school.
It makes no sense for the few upper class families in the suburbs to get the best public AND private schools while everyonne in the city gets what? Cheap beat up old schools, knowing the people in the city have a cost of living thats just as high, because its sometimes more expensive to live in the city than in the suburbs.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
There are more important things in life, than getting laid as many times as you can before you die lol.
I actually want a serious relationship, with a girl I love and who loves me.
You can have your sluts and one night stands.You can even marry a girl whos really good in bed, but hey if she justs wants whats in your wallet, blame yourself for being so shallow.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
No paper, eh? I bet they change their tune when you need to pay for tuition with a cheque, money order, cash... How about a grant? How about financial assistance? Things written by lawyers and financial institutions are on, yeah, you guessed it: PAPER. In fact, law firms send you not just one paper copy, but MULTIPLES! That college will never be able to fully escape it.
You have not seen old books, have you?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Either that, or Iowa College is going broke and want to rip-off students by charging for paper:
"the school's printing costs have increased significantly, so this fall the number of free printouts will be limited to 20 pages per user per session. "
20 pages PER SESSION (semester). That's absurd, most students at schools WITH PAPER print at least 20 pages per semester! And exactly how much do they think they're going to charge? The school probably uses the cheap copy paper anyway, which is $3 a ream (500 sheets) at Office Max, and since the school buys in bulk I'm sure it costs then less than $2, perhaps less than $1, so how much do they think they can really charge students? Oh sure toner costs money, but what is that, $50 per 5,000 sheets? (if that much) So you're probably looking at 1 cent per page, so they're limiting the students to only 20 cents worth of paper a semester??
What kind of scam is this, and who's going to fall for it?
Also, the article doesn't exactly say what they're going to do with books that aren't in a digital format. Are they going to scan the books in? Are they going to leave the pages as image files or OCR? Because I have a little experience with OCRs, and most don't do that great of a job with text books, with their pictures and side notes on the margins.
Not only that, but does each student have to pay the full cost of each textbook even though you're only getting a file on your iPaq? If so, what are they doing with the paper book the student paid for? I sure hope they have some kind of discount, I'd be rather upset if I paid $120 for a Calculus book and they handed me a floppy disk, not to mention a iPaq couldn't display most the theorems in college Calculus book on one screen, requiring lots of scrolling.
Another issue: how do you resell your book? Guess you can't, which is why students better get some huge discounts, but if the college doesn't charge full price the copyright owner can sue, right?
Now to hardware: how much of a book can you fit on a iPaq? Sure a student could purchase a 1 gig microdrive and get by, but will that be included with the iPaq? Because if all they get is the standard 32 (or is it 64?) megs, then I'd imagine a single 600+ page book would easily take up all the room regardless of the format, so what do they do with the rest of their books, run back to the dorm and upload the next book between every class? Or maybe only have a chapter of each book at any given time, I suppose that might work with the memory given.
I imagine this whole "paperless" idea won't last past the first semester.