Is The Whole World Dumbing Down?

A few months ago I read and reviewed Shelley Gare’s book, The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense. I was shaken by the déjà vu I experienced in every chapter. Her book is a treatise on the evolution and spread of postmodernism.

Recently, while doing my usual reading and follow-ups on matters educational, I stumbled on a brief clip of Branford Marsalis, renowned Jazz musician and educationalist. I admired Marsalis from afar and for many years I’ve appreciated his musicianship.

To hear this iconic, clear-minded musician and teacher talk of his students brought Gare’s almost prophetic words back to me with a vengeance:

Airheads, at their most extreme, can worry only about
themselves and the rest of the world can go to buggery.

Are our learners catching airheadism too?

video

Post to Post

This week is proving to be busier that usual for me, with no time to catch my breath, or thoughts in posts, so it seems. I'd decided to catch up on my post reading, reduce the list on my RSS Reader and do some hard thinking rather than writing. But it doesn’t always work out that way, of course.

I end up commenting on posts on other blogs and writing more there than I would if I’d written a post. That’s how it’s been for me since the weekend.

Share

George Siemens’, Why Groups Fail To Share Information Effectively, was such a post that drew my comment. He picks up on the Psyblog article of the same name.

I recalled Tony Karrer’s post, Reduce Searching start Talking, that prompted my long reply in June, and also Michele Martin’s earlier discussions on homophily.

George’s enviably short post summarises a number of related ideas that get me thinking:

• Failure of (group) interaction to take advantage of the value of critique and debate
• sharing information that will not cause conflict or upset others
• the need for a degree of self-confidence (and a supportive environment) to ensure contrary voices are heard
• group pressure to normalize ideas.

At TCS we have been and are following a series of sessions of appreciative inquiry. These involve staff group discussions where shared ideas, once collated, are ostensibly contributing in some measure to the path of the current restructuring of the organisation.
In the light of all of the above, perhaps you can figure the way my mind’s working right now?

Free

Tony Karrer’s post, Free, picks up on Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, and homes in on the idea that “we value atoms more than bits”.

Tony highlights the theme that content delivered as bits (online, etc) has less value than the equivalent atoms version (printed book, say).

He summarises a number of interesting key questions related to how consumers might contribute to the system and how the effectiveness of networks might best utilise the system.

It bothers me that bits are regarded as being less valuable than atoms. I’d already discovered that within my own family, bits are encouraging time-debts that are unlikely to be repaid, in the form of stocks of never-to-be-viewed TV video recordings, not to say too much about the posts on my RSS Reader that I might never get round to reading – sigh.

Upcoming events

Some free elearning events are coming up, now and till the end of October. Perhaps you might like to contribute to these enriching, free webinars through bits of participation and sharing?

related posts - >> ( 2 ) ( 1 )

The Un-trivial Story

Design from the Māori fable of Māui and his brothers taming the sun
The Marae, Te Papa Museum of New Zealand

Novelists and playwrights are done without it.
The success of the film industry depends on it.
Folklore is embedded in its construction.
It is the basis for substantive contributions to world poetry.

The Old Testament is so graced with it there is not a page
in that book where it is absent.

Its might is well known and celebrated by educators,
instructors and coaches of all disciplines and in all cultures.

It is the fascination of children, the bread and butter of
storytellers, the potion used by keynote speakers
and even the magic pill of bloggers.

Yet in an age when change is the watchword, the modest story remains steadfast and unvarying in its ability to capture the attention of people of all ages and in all walks of life. The conundrum is that it should be so commonplace and yet so potent.

How can this simple device still be so assiduously engaging?

Captivating

At a recent meeting I attended, the guest speaker made an inelegant approach to the topic, was inept at choosing words appropriately and had a tendency to ramble. What saved the too long speech and made it memorable was a story told near the close of its delivery. I watched, fascinated as people moved from angles of repose to more attentive postures.

Designers of adverts use its arousing magic in a similar way to the speech-maker. Executed well in the manipulative exploit of advertising, it can result in awards being won, and not just for sales statistics.

Relevance

No other teaching device can bring context so uncontrivedly and adroitly to a teaching moment as the story. Whether written, narrated or depicted in scenes in a video, it has the knack of introducing a packet of learning incognito.

Through the conduit of the story, the whole of Māori folklore has been passed down to us by word of mouth, as were the traditional beliefs expressed in stories and songs of many other cultures.

Interest

There is an innate tendency in everyone to follow the passage of a story. The successes of the publishing and film industries are testimony to that, individually and jointly. What senses-able child in western society today does not know of Harry Potter?

For as much as adventure-games appear to captivate and engage participants with the matrix of the game, it is the unfolding escapade that captures the interest of players. They create and experience their own stories within the contexts of their games.

At the start of this century, my wife, Linda, learnt of the Sid Meier’s computer adventure-game Civilization III. Despite my total disinterest in adventure games at the time, she enticed me to partner her while she played out her first game. We chose to be joint advisors in building a British civilization ruled by Queen Elizabeth.

Being new to the rules and capabilities of CIV III, we had to learn a lot to help our growing civilization to survive. And did we learn a lot!

After a long struggle, successfully avoiding conflict after conflict, we won a cultural victory, according to the rules of CIV III, in building a virtual civilization on a resource-rich land-locked virtual continent. For as much as we have played the game since then, perhaps hundreds of times, we can still remember the thrill of our first CIV III adventure.

Imagination

My daughter, Catriona, is as familiar with ice-cream as she is with the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy directed by Peter Jackson.

She was just 12 years old when she first took an avid interest in all that The Rings had to offer. Catriona saw the films and then read the trilogy by J R R Tolkien a year or so later. When I discussed the nature of the Eye of Sauron with her, I was astonished at what she knew.

“It’s not the same in the films as in the books”, she told me. She explained that the film depicted the Eye of Sauron held in a tower, but in the book it was like the eye of a spirit that was seemingly ubiquitous.

Catriona read Tolkien only after having seen the films many times over. Yet the image of the Eye of Sauron as depicted in the film did not interfere with her ability to imagine quite a different concept of it as read from the book.

This experience showed me how able Catriona was at discerning a screen depiction from its counterpart in the original novel. But it was also proof of the power of the written story to excite the imagination, even in the wake of a different mental image laid down by a series of scenes in a movie.

Memorable

I first learnt of Winnie-the-Pooh when I was eight years old, but not from a story read directly from one of A A Milne’s novels. My friend next door had a well-read older sister who delighted in telling stories to her younger brothers and anyone else who cared to listen.

In her own words she told the story that was later to become a favourite of mine and that I read to my children many times, “In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees and the Stories Begin”.

Never underestimate the power of the story. Its unique ability to capture the imagination can make an everyday event memorable, add interest to an otherwise mundane activity, bring relevance to a teaching moment and wake up an indifferent audience.

An Historical Prophesy

Postmodernism is rationale for responsible

adults to behave like reckless adolescents.

For almost ten years I have lived with this inside me hoping that some morning I’d wake and find it’s just all been a dream. Or maybe I would start seeing things differently. I recall conversations with colleagues in 2001 and watching them recoil when I spoke of postmodernism. Some had never heard of the term; others who had would nod scornfully and turn away.

Over the years, however, the word postmodern has crept into the lingo of educators. Now I hear it used freely by educators in the same way as artists talk of Cubism or historians speak of the Renaissance.

Just recently a good friend and colleague was listening to me bemoan the seemingly senseless happenings in education when he said with a smile of recognition, “You should read The Triumph of the Airheads. I’ll lend you a copy. Read it for yourself.” I thought he was having me on.

Shelley Gare’s The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense was first published in 2006 by Park Street Press.

Bruce Hammonds reviewed the book early in 2007. I’m half-way through it, and still not used to the déjà vu I get at every chapter. The world that I've observed this century and that I was slowly becoming convinced must have been only in my imagination, sits bolt upright like a pop-up on every page.

From the cover of the book:

“The airheads are winning. We live in an upside-down world where celebrity matters more than substance; correct spelling is considered less important than knowing how to do PowerPoint; bright maths and science students go into investment banking so they can make truckloads of money; and small girls seriously regard a trashy hotel heiress as a role model. We have an American president (2006) who gets Sweden and Switzerland mixed up and Australian politicians who spend millions on spin doctors while schools and hospitals go begging. The age of the airhead has one message. Commonsense doesn’t pay off. If you’re smart, be smarter: play dumb.”

It is astute. It is funny. It is insightful.
It is about how society is losing the plot.

Gare summarises seven key features of the contemporary airhead:

voracious consumerism,
obsession with statistics,
aversion to reading books,
selfishness,
short-term thinking,
love of hypothesis and the jargon that goes with it,
a tendency to bully.

She mentions other elements:

conceited ignorance,
dislike of things serious,
remorseless when things go wrong.

We are in a world where it’s not only blissful to be ignorant, it also has to be celebrated.

Gare speaks of Paris Hilton as a postmodern Marie Antoinette. "Doesn’t anyone realise this woman - who hated the sight of books but loved to spend and party - got her head chopped off? Or why?"

Gare is knowledgeable of Newton’s third law – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – and explains how airheads seemingly rise above this fundamental principle:

“Airheads, at their most extreme, can worry only about themselves and the rest of the world can go to buggery. Airheadism thrives on concerning itself with the next five seconds because, with any luck, the next five minutes, days, months, years may, like, you know, never happen . . . or at least, if something does happen and it’s bad, it won’t happen to you. The best place to see all this in action is not in a Krispy Kreme doughnut store, or watching a twenty-something flashing a credit card on a Friday night over a $300 meal. It’s in the business pages of our newspapers, and on page one. Short-term thinking is the scourge of our times . . .”

I think of the recent global financial catastrophe and read Gare’s words as (an historical) prophesy.


Check out:

The Sweet Smell of Success – Shelly Gare – The Australian News

Podcast – Shelley Gare on the language of Airheadism (ABC Radio National) introduced by Kate Bochner 

The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense
Park Street Press – ISBN 1-876624-54-X

Community and The Book

courtesy the hummingbird

Dean Shareski’s post, How The Book Destroyed Community, embeds a video of Rory McGreal who posits that the book is the biggest destroyer of human community, especially learning commmunities. While I agree with Dean’s reflective stance on this matter and respect his discretion, I found McGreal’s cover hard to digest.

McGreal maintains that the book first caused people to learn without the aid of community - that when the book first came into its own as ‘the portable book’, people found they no longer needed community to help them learn about things - that they could easily pick up a book, and without the community, learn all they needed to know on their own. He maintains that because of the book 'no community is necessary'.

Shred of truth

While there are some threads of truth in these ideas, McGreal delivers a sermon, not unlike that of a preacher who wishes to admonish the book with a controlled restraint on the fire and brimstone. I wonder he's ever thought of how the book came to be published in the first place.

Is the arrival of a brand new book the effort of a single person working on his or her own, composing, writing, printing, bookbinding and distributing? Is it true that 'no community is necessary'?

William Blake would have come close to achieving this amazing feat. Blake was an engraver, artist, craftsman and poet who also published his own writing. But he was an exceptional person.

Books are rarely written, printed, bound and distributed by the authors, never mind the paper making, unless perhaps as a community activity in school where the book becomes an agent of learning in more ways than one.

A book of verse

In 1994, I published a collection of verse on a limited budget. The book displayed the publisher’s name, Linneth, a composite of my wife’s first name and mine. There was no way I could publish the book entirely on my own. I approached a printer in town, who made a living through the support of local communities. The printer employed some of these people, but did not own a paper factory. So paper had to be bought from a manufacturing company employing people from communities in another town.

My good friend, Kevin Meehan, who had a small part-time printing business supported by friends and acquaintances, helped me print the cover. A book-binding company in town assisted me to get the pages bound with the book-cover. This firm was also supported by communities as some of their members were employees.

These processes involved some industrial involvement, some cottage industry and some amateur effort. None of that industry could have existed on its own, and all of it contributed to community. The amateur practice was me, for I wrote the 72 pages of verse in the first place. I supplied the printer with a Word file of the text typed by me, saved on a floppy bought new from the local electronic store.

Much of the verse I wrote was about my family and of the communities around Wellington where they live. Without community, much of the writing in the book would never have happened, let alone have been published. As well, most of what I had learnt that took me out to these community industries came from books, including the phone numbers of key people involved.

Communities everywhere

This story of my little book of verse is not unique. But it gives small mention of the library communities within a country and throughout the world that are supported by the book.

I come from Dunfermline where I was raised as a child. It is also the birth-town of Andrew Carnegie who gave away most of his fortune to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities throughout the world. While Carnegie's money was for building libraries, he never paid for a single book. He believed that books should be provided by the communities through the work of local councils.

So I wonder how 'the portable book' could possibly be charged with the destruction of communities. It seems that it’s doing the exact opposite by supporting communities, allowing them to come together, and providing the basis for community activity and input as well as offering a reason for networking to grow and exist within these communities.

What I’ve described here are aspects to do with the book that not only foster community activity but also bring communities together in the same way the production of many other technological artefacts do. There are many other aspects to the book that contribute to communities and how they exist, function and grow. Just ask anyone from Fair Isle what contribution the book makes to that community today. It is hardly one that’s on a road to destruction caused by the book.

Biting the hand that fed

Sadly, McGreal’s approach is typical of a view shared by some people. In the long past history of the book, people with similar dispositions burned bibles, books and booklets by the billion. Not only do they eschew and denigrate the technology that brought them to where they are, they also wish to forget how it got there in the first place.

That they are so embittered about what the book did or did not give them is sad. Biting the hand that fed gets a little sympathy from me if only for their state of mind. I’m powerless to do anything about that.
Nor can I do much about their understanding of causality.

What I challenge, however, is the way that some of them seek to persuade others to share their same jejune and narrow point of view.

video Rory McGreal

Hiv U evr wundird wot it wiz lyk B4 dikshinariz?

courtesy Wordle

Hiv U evr wundird wot it wiz lyk B4 dikshinariz? Wen da wurdz wiz spelt NA way U lyk? An ya cud spel wurds difrint onda sem payj an nobdy nyu ye cdnt spel? Sumtyms a git emale letirs frm da kidis in skule an dey ryt lyk dis. Sumtyms i git txts frm da kidis onda cell an dey txt jis lyk dis. Its frendly cos dey txt jis lyk dey tok. Sumtyms i repli da sem wey an i gits a frendly txt back.
Das kyewl. Dat makes me feel wun o dey kiddis. Das kyewl 2.

So what’s with txt language? I notice that the e in ‘text’ is now dropped when referring to txting on a mobile, even in formal texts. The word is nearly new and is appropriate.

I sit close to several teachers of English in the office at work. They are cool people and although some are boomers like me, they all agree that language and how we write it is evolving all the time.

I have a special interest in language. It is so relevant to thinking and learning in a subject. It’s the bricks and mortar of being able to think.

When I was very young my reading and writing was atrocious - I’d no chance of spelling that word correctly either. My spelling was shoking. My mother, who was concerned about her son’s literacy, tried valiantly to entice me to read. She bought me novels. I read some but not much. I preferred to read comics. My mother disapproved of comics.

My grandmother, who was experienced and knew what her grandchild liked, would secrete a bundle of comics under the bedspread in my room for me to enjoy. She knew the worth of comics. She knew that ANY reading was better than none. She knew that it was the mind that needed the skill to lift the letters and words off the page and understand - that it didn’t matter if it wasn’t approved high school reading.

My reading skill was improved by me reading comics. Eventually I graduated to reading short stories and novels and hundreds of books on Science for that was my interest.

Books have always been a part of my life since then. Linda and I read books, and our house is often a mess with them. Both our daughter's are avid readers.

My daughter Catriona, barely 3 years old and well before she could read, would take her favourite book down from the shelves in the hall.

She would sit and turn the pages. Sometimes she would sniff them. Sometimes she’d hold the book upside down when pretending to read it, for there were no pictures. That didn’t avert her fascination. It was one of my little books of poetry, the smallest book on the shelves. Catriona identified it as her book because of its tiny size. She never tore a page and always returned it to the shelf when she was finished playing with it.

When our children were both primary school age, our living room floor was always littered. In our house you could take your life in your hands by trying to walk across the living room floor in the dark. It was always littered - with books.

When Catriona was older, I would sometimes find her reading under the blankets with a torch when she was really supposed to be asleep. I just left her to it. She’s 15 now and has read every Harry Potter book published, some of them twice.

She has also read Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy. I've seen the movies, but I've never read the Lord Of The Rings books. I found them hard to read.

Catriona uses txt language on her mobile all the time, yet she writes in near perfect English when she does her assignments for school. Her spelling’s not bad either. There’s a lesson to be learnt here.

Blogging In The Stocks

Since my PC died, I feel as if my blogging has been put in the stocks. Funny enough, the lack of PC and drop in frequency of posts seems to have had an inverse effect on blog hits, for Google Analytics showed a definite rise in the past few days.


Nothing to celebrate but it’s nice to know my readership hasn’t died just because my PC has.

But hey, with all this time on my hands, I find all sorts of other things to do at home.

Who needs a PC?


I was lent a copy of George Monbiot’s, ‘Bring On The Apocalypse’.
If ever there is a writer who will write great blog posts, he is. His book is essentially a collection of short essays (what Monbiot calls arguments) on six key topics of interest all written this century, some very recent:

Arguments With God
Arguments With Nature
Arguments With War
Arguments With Power
Arguments With Money
Arguments With Culture

Monbiot's new blog is on the Guardian’s web site – check it out.

I also listen to the radio a lot – always did.

Last Saturday, Kim Hill interviewed David Haywood, a New Zealand blogger who has earned such a reputation for his posts that he has been persuaded to write a book, essentially comprised of his blog posts, would you believe. If ever there was a writer to prove the rule about blogging clashing with authorship in print, Haywood wouldn’t be one. Check out Haywood's blog.

This Is Not An Advert - It's A Rant

courtesy make your own comic

I’ve just read Dick Carlson's How to create amazing technical learning. It’s an ebook that contains a lot of down-to-earth common-sense advice. It’s a good read and hilariously funny, lightening what could otherwise be a rather boring topic.

Carlson gives some grunty tips on preparing and delivering training as well as pointers on how to handle a few aspects of a training company. It’s in a 72 page portable document format (pdf). Check out the link at the base of this post[1].

Techos hate them!
I like pdfs, and was surprised to learn that techos hate them. A couple of years ago, I had a really useful discussion with my son, Jack, who explained what it was about pdf files that irked the pants off techos.

I remonstrated at the time. On reflection, I now have to agree with Jack.

Some pdfs look good, smell good, feel good, but when you get down to using them as resources, they are inordinately difficult, if not near impossible to use. And there’s no excuse for this.

Hundreds of pages!

There are pdf resource ebooks that run to hundreds of pages but have no linked index or bookmarks to assist you to navigate the content.
I get lost and I’d give up on a lot of those if it weren’t for my dogged determination to learn the good stuff in them.

When I open an ebook, the first thing that hits me, even with some of the best, is the stunning quality of the huge images, the copious intros, and the trailing contents in the first, several pages. These are all very good for letting me know what’s in the book: I just get tired getting to the stuff.

As I scroll through the contents, I recollect the original intention of the pdf. It was to provide a way of sending a formatted electronic text that could be printed without problems to do with the exactness of how the printed end product looked.

Keeping up with the technology:

Since last century, Adobe has built some very useful and wonderful features into Acrobat. I won’t bore you with the details, but nearly all of those features come into their own when the pdf containing them is viewed from the screen.

These days, most pdfs are viewed from the screen, but they’re not made to be used that way. They’re designed as if they should be printed and read from the sheets. The problem is that the use of the technology has just not moved with the technology available.

Neither are resource ebooks meant to be read from start to finish. When I find a resource ebook that’s really useful, I have to open it in Acrobat and put in links, as well as bookmarks, to prevent me having cerebral blowout when I try to find things that are useful.

Content? Link it!

Even with a large ebook, it doesn’t take me longer than half an hour to put the links in. But it’s easier to do when the pdf is first made, and of course, I’ve no control over that decision. Content links, as well as bookmarks that can be opened from the left margin, can be planned when the text file is first created, and before the pdf is made.

Check out the links and bookmarks in this Content Developer’s Bulletin by Becta. It’s only an 8 page pdf. But it’s written for people who haven’t a lot of time to scroll through even 8 pages looking for the good stuff.

Wonderful resources:

There are links to these wonderfully information packed resources that are hard to navigate at the base of this post[1 - 3]. Check them out too. They all have great, useful information in them. It’s a pity it’s so difficult to find. There’s one that’s admittedly a report[2] and not really an ebook – but it has over 270 pages!

The writers of The eLearning Guild post some splendid ebooks on all aspects of elearning. They are truly wonderful and I recommend them to anyone interested in learning some good tips and skills. One of their books has 834 tips for successful online instruction[3]. It runs to 71 pages. I’ve used it a lot, and I kept going back to it, but only after I’d thrown it into Acrobat and bookmarked the sections.

I’m all for moving with the technology. Let’s use ebooks, yes, but let’s also have them made using the up-to-date features available with today’s technology, so that the functionality of the product is also up-to-date.

1. Creating Amazing Technical Learning - Dick Carlson
   
2. Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies - The Berkman Center For Internet & Society, Harvard University
   
3. 834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction - The eLearning Guild

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Expert Texpert

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers has brought about an outpouring of interesting reviews. Some are lucid, some are not so; some are supportive and some are emotional. Some show distrust for the claims he makes. I wonder why there is such emotional feeling in so many of the reviews I’ve recently come across. The 10,000-hour principle is one particular aspect that seems to be taking a bit of a thump from some reviewers.

Yet the evidence Gladwell provides, and let’s not deny it, the past support for this not-new principle clearly points to its validity.

It’s true that Gladwell is making some sweeping statements in his book, but his arguments are compelling. It’s also true that if someone goes looking for evidence to refute any of Gladwell’s claims they are sure to find it (Goethe).

Looking for evidence:

As I read through Outliers, I found myself looking for evidence for and against too, and why shouldn’t I? From my own knowledge and experience, most of what Gladwell alleges about expert ability in musicianship alone seems to stack up.

But one has to take care when considering exactly what is meant by an ‘expert’; I will discuss one piece of evidence I found in support of this. Virtuoso violinist, Yehudi Menuhin was undoubtedly an expert on his instrument. I choose Menuhin because Gladwell does not mention him anywhere in Outliers.

A quota of hours:

Menuhin began to play the violin when he was 3 years old. He reached expert status perhaps before the age of 13, and continued to practice, perform and teach in the realm of the expert till near the end of the twentieth century. There was plenty of time between the age of 3 and 13 for Menuhin to have put in his requisite quota of hours to become one of the 10,000-hour experts.

Yet when I looked about for evidence of his inexpertness on the violin, it was not hard to find, even within his mature years as a world-class violinist. I had already recalled an interview I’d seen on TV when Menuhin admitted that the techniques required to play Scottish fiddle music were beyond him. These techniques applied especially to his expertise with the violin bow.

Recently, I’d also found a YouTube video where Menuhin admitted that he could not improvise while playing jazz and swing alongside Stéphane Grappelli - that Grappelli had to write the music for Menuhin to follow so they could perform together.



Yet Menuhin could improvise on his violin, there is no doubt about this. Improvising is part of the classical ‘training’ that all violinists go through sooner or later. He simply could not improvise in jazz and swing music. For as close as jazz music is to classical, the genres are significantly far removed from each other to compromise Menuhin’s expertise.

Clearly, the term ‘expert’, in the context of Outliers, has to be well defined before a cogent discussion can eventuate the pros and cons of the principles involved within the discipline of the expert.

Cooperation, collaboration and the common good:

Let me state here that in no way do I write this as a criticism of Menuhin’s talent as a musician or performer. I have admired his supreme musicianship since I was a child. I also feel that it says a lot for how Menuhin was as a person, that he came clean about his own deficiencies as a violinist. Few expert musicians would be so openly honest about their expertise on their own instrument.

Menuhin was willing to cooperate and work with his fellow expert musicians, in all aspects of their interests, their craft, their various instruments and musical disciplines. This is one message that I took from Outliers, that a successful society has to be built on collaboration for the common good, not just for the privileged or the elite.

Kim Hill's interview with Malcolm Gladwell (27m 48s), NZ 13 Dec 2008

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Let Me Count The Ways

The book and the paper it’s made from have recently taken a rap. The suggestion is that the book is outmoded. It's well past its use-by date in education and it's not environmentally friendly.

I like the book. Having had a lifelong association with the invention,
I realise my opinion inclines in its favour. To be fair to the book in the context of learning, however, the reasons gathered in support of its removal or replacement should be related to its merits and demerits as a learning resource.

When weighing the stresses, it is difficult to assess its effectiveness against digital counterparts unless a few ground rules are defined.

Judged by its cover

It is unfair to pitch the book against such things as an online chat or a wiki. Whatever the equivalents of these technologies will look like in future, their application and purpose cannot be compared, with any relevance, to those offered by a book. Try comparing the virtues of a submarine with those of a helicopter and you’ll see what I mean.

Neither is it fair to condemn the book just because its content may go out of date. Data in a web-page, a blog post or even a tweet are just as likely to go out of date, and for the same reasons, with no likelier promise of edits to correct these.

What are the benefits and drawbacks?

The rate of use of paper throughout the world is now higher than ever; it rages wildly and at a mounting pace. But it’s not the book, textbook, printed educational literature or school note-pad that is mainly to blame for the burgeoning rate of paper production. Advertising, and the wasteful packaging of goods, contribute to more than half the global consumption of paper.

More trees

This does not detract from the volume of paper consumed for educational purposes. It is huge. A recent article on campus sustainability and paper consumption by Clark University, reported that 720 trees are harvested each year to supply printer/copy paper for that establishment alone. It may be just a leaf in a tome, but I have an eye for conservation, and that fact leaves me pondering.

Burgeoning content

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach states, in her September video, that by the year 2020, knowledge could be doubling every 72 hours.

She claims that by that time, there will be no place for the book in schools, as it would be impossible for it to keep pace with the rate of knowledge growth. Setting aside issues of relevance to the school curriculum, knowledge delivered at its predicted rate of creation by 2020 couldn’t possibly be accomplished in book form. I wonder if any data management system could ever deliver knowledge at such a rate - and for what purpose.

Pictures, images and diagrams

In the twentieth century, advances in the printing industry brought vibrant colour to illustrations in books. Only in the last 15 to 20 years has such quality of detail and colour been viewable on the computer screen.

The digital device has the edge on the book, with the use of diagrammatic sequence, melting images, moving images or other animated schema. Especially in student learning, there is a growing need for the use of visual images as learning tools to promote student understanding.

Videos in particular can provide amazingly detailed imagery. With the animation technology available today, it is possible to view a 3D virtual journey through the chambers of the human heart, or to observe the journey through the intake and exhaust valves of the internal combustion engine.

As David Whitehead said in his speech on strategies for improving literacy, simply asking students to imagine (as a thinking/learning tool) may not be as successful as it was in the past.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this may be as a result of the use of explicit animated imagery, rather than other teaching tools that are perhaps more likely to exercise the imagination of young minds. For as limited as a book may be in depicting complex concepts in pictures, its practiced use has the power to stimulate the imagination.

Visuals with text

When creating a learning resource, there is a tendency to overuse the features available to the digital resource designer. While acceptable and effective page design has become a well-established skill in textbook writing, the same cannot be said universally of digital learning resource design.

The misuse of PowerPoint as a learning tool highlights the vagaries of incorporating voice with text. Their joint use accompanying displayed images or diagrams in a learning resource causes cognitive overload in the learner. It is difficult to achieve this with a textbook. Verbal and written information simply cannot be presented simultaneously unless the teacher speaks while the learner is trying to read.

Copyright moves quick quick to music

One of the wonderful things about books is their ability to be shared.
A book, when first sold, can then be lent, gifted or sold again – the so-called first-sale doctrine.

But for the existence of that principle, libraries, second-hand book and CD stores, as well as video rental outlets would be illegal. Though there have been several attempts made over the decades to place restrictions on the resale of printed books, actions restricting the sharing of digital equivalents have moved more fiercely. It seems that even the publishers of printed resources may now wish to cash in on this idea.

It was suggested in The Future Of The Internet III that copyright protection technology may dominate content control in 2020. A little less than a third of expert opinion surveyed agreed that this was a likely scenario.

The tractable e-book

As I said at the start of this soliloquy, I like the book. But the thought of a digital replacement still excites me. I’ve yet to get my hands on an e-book, like the Amazon Kindle. As Jim Henderson says:

"For this to go, there has to be buy-in by the publishers."

Video

Take charge of your e-book learning - a metaphor

Tēnā koutou katoa

Welcome to you all

The recent discussions on training and education pose interesting questions on how these disciplines are defined. I recently put a sheet together for use as a training aid, but perhaps it's more education. Reading some of the opinion commented on blog posts recently I wonder how others may define this. What do you think?

Take Charge Of Your E-Book Learning

“You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.” Oprah Winfrey

Complaints and objections:

The technological advancements of the latter part of last century, such as electronic computers and the Internet, have made learning more accessible to us all. Among the innovations that came with these developments is the e-book but it is not always looked upon as a helpful invention. Common grumbles about e-books are:

• Too difficult to read – ‘I get sore eyes peering at the screen.’
• Too unwieldy – ‘l can’t flick through the file like a book.’
• Too many pages – ‘I haven’t time to read all that!’

The list goes on. The fact is we are living in the 21st Century. People do learn from the computer screen and some of the most up-to-date learning can happen this way. Most e-books are not intended to be read from start to finish but that is a poor learning habit whatever the medium that’s used.

Just as there are smart ways to learn from a hard-copy resource book, there are effective ways to learn from an e-book. The techniques can be applied as much to gleaning what’s new on this morning’s intranet as gathering useful information from a weighty text file.

Windscreen wipers:

Rule number one is optimise your viewing.

Grime on the screen limits ease of reading. You should clean your screen regularly and this is simply good practice. Correct adjustment of the brightness and contrast settings of your monitor can also go a long way to improving the readability of information on the screen.

Unwanted reflections and glare from nearby lights or windows can interfere with your ease of viewing so adjust the monitor position to reduce or if possible eliminate these. Though liquid crystal displays do not show the same annoying array of reflections so common with convex glass monitors they still need regular cleaning.

Text size:

Text that’s too small to read comfortably can make learning a real effort but there are many adjustments that can be done to help with this. You may have to think about your PC display settings for instance but it could be as easy as looking for the text option on the application you’re using, like the zoom button shown above and that's available on most tool bars or using a browser menu option to alter the text size.

Contents, indices, bookmarks, & other features:

Use the contents list or index if there is one. Just as in any hard copy book, a directory in an e-book gives a summary of what’s contained there. It pays to scan through a directory before you begin study reading and this is just good practice when using any resource book. If you are lucky to have a directory that’s equipped with hyperlinks you can be taken to the start of relevant sections on a click. The width of a directory frame is usually adjustable so that it doesn’t encroach on your text space and it can often be closed or hidden when not in use.

Most e-books have powerful summary links such as bookmarks included in the left frame. They’re a real lifesaver for those who can’t stand scanning hundreds of pages of boring text to find the interesting parts. Though bookmarks may not present a comprehensive inventory, they usually point to the beginning of key sections and therefore save time.

Links within a text can help you flick swiftly to important parts. Most texts provided with those also have ‘Return to Top’ links at convenient positions, permitting the reader to return immediately to a key starting point.

Some e-books permit you to re-open them where you left off. For instance, in Adobe Reader the page-holder is switched on by choosing the settings:

Edit (Windows) or Adobe Reader (Macintosh) >
Preferences >Startup > Reopen Documents to Last Viewed Page > All files.

Search:

Many applications have search capability. Some are more sophisticated than others but usually the quick keys Ctrl F bring up a plain search window, like the one shown above, to allow a keyword to be entered when looking for a specific item or reference to it. A few slick searches with careful keyword selections and using the ‘next’ function can frequently save time otherwise spent exploring a large directory.

Learning needs energy:

The environment must be right for effective learning so you have to choose the appropriate time and have the right headspace. When the delivery is very low energy, as with information viewed from a file, you must bring energy to the process. Learning from the screen requires high energy – a passive approach doesn’t work. Many learners have difficulty knowing what parts of an e-book to scan through and what parts should be studied in detail.

Scan sections that seem to have parts you may find useful.
Study parts that have specific information you need to remember.

Printing a section of text:

When there’s a need to work with a section of information repeatedly it’s sometimes easier to pick up a printed copy than it is to keep accessing a file. Though this is not recommended as a standard practice, it is an option that may present some relief for those who must have a hard copy of a chunk of text. But before sending part of a text file to the printer, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I sure the printed text is going to be useful?
• Are there any pages that I don’t need?
• How often am I likely to use the copy after I’ve read it?
• Am I likely to pass the copy on to someone else?

Having considered answers to all of these and you still wish to print, take care to select only the pages you need. Some e-books can run to more than 500 pages. Imagine your embarrassment if you accidentally lock up the printer as people wait for the next quarter hour while you waste a bucket of paper.

If this happens, switch off the printer and cancel your print order. If you don’t know how to do this, ask around for help.

Perhaps it’s best to find out how to learn from the screen.

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