Ebooks in Schools

More on ebooks: Nicholas Carr brings word that Florida just passed "a budget measure that bans printed textbooks from schools starting in the 2015-16 school year."

Interesting approach, Florida.

In fact, it doesn't mandate that existing print textbooks be destroyed in a huge bonfire, just requires "public schools to adopt digital-only textbooks by the 2015-16 school year, and spend at least 50 percent of their textbook budget on digital materials by that time."

The governor has not yet signed this into law, and there are some budget issues since schools are concerned about the cost of not only ebooks, but ebook readers. Even if the textbooks themselves don't cost any more, I imagine having to provide the hardware to make them available to all students could get expensive.

So, interesting approach. I'm sure we will watch attentively to see what happens.

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Unmaking the Grade

I don't grade many people, thankfully, because it's kind of stressful.

I was one of the instructors for a for-credit course for a graduate degree in medical science (kind of a pre-med master's), and you really just don't even want to get into grading.

Do I want to be responsible for someone not getting into medical school because they got a bad grade in a class on using information resources? I think not.

Yet at the same time, do I want to just shrug off someone's blatant failure to do the assignments? Not really.

In my case the course director tried to make it all very tidy and precise: do W, X and Y to accumulate Z number of points and you get an A, but unless everything is multiple choice, there's always room for interpretation.

Does this paragraph address this aspect of the assignment? Kind of? Enough to just say yes, or not that much, so we have to say no?

And then let's not even get into the irritating problem of how you recognize the ones who really do go all out to get everything done to the letter, when you're kind of designing the whole thing with the intention that anybody who bothers to expend a bare minimum of effort will get a good grade.

Make up extra-awesome-fantastico grades that cannot be symbolized by letters alone? Go back to kindergarten and add smiley faces and gold stars?

All this is to say that I really liked this post by ladysquires at the writingishard blog (its proper name contains a naughty word!--that I find I am weirdly squeamish about copying here, for some reason. Perhaps a future post will address my conflicted feelings about profanity!--on the internet!--to some amusing end).

The author thoughtfully considers the question of why students care so deeply about grades, concluding that in some ways, for some students, they really do matter as much as the students think or fear, even while in others they aren't that important (as anyone 10 years out of college who was kind of disappointed that potential employers weren't more impressed by that hard-won GPA could say).

There's discussion of the way that this is partly generational, since when fewer people went to college and there were more well-paying jobs that didn't require college degrees, grades may not have been as big a deal.

So, grades are practically meaningless, but also mean exactly as much as they're made to mean by the next school you're applying to, which could be pretty much everything.

Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to grade many people.

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Getttin' Some Schoolin'

Although I was homeschooled, I have some love for the public school system. I therefore enjoyed this post from Jeff Fecke on Alas, A Blog, arguing that the public school system in the U.S. does not, in fact, completely suck.

I will leave with that thought, because I am busy coughing.

Coughing, coughing, coughing.

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In the Mists of the 20th Century

I was thinking that technology has come a long way in the 10+ years since I was in college.

For instance, I didn't know anyone with a cell phone in college. No mp3 players. I had a computer, but it certainly wasn't the sleek and adorable laptop I have today.

It was a blocky little box with a tiny screen and a keyboard that was attached with a curly cord, like a phone cord. Aw, who am I kidding, I thought it was adorable too. I loved that thing. But it sure wasn't something you could bring to class and use to take notes.

I had one course with an online discussion forum (participation optional), but otherwise nothing to do with schoolwork was on the web. The college had a website, of course, but it was strictly for informational purposes, like a brochure.

There was no online course registration, grades, syllabi, student account information, nothin'. We got our schedules on paper, and liked it!

Or not, depending on what classes we got into and how early in the morning they were. (9:00 am?! Horrors!)

It's a whole new world, all right, full of new and exciting things.

I do kind of miss thinking 8:30 am was a hideously early time to wake up. I had no idea how dreadful it would get later on in life.

Travelin'

I write this post from onsite at my 10th college reunion in Lewiston, Maine, where it is a lovely sunny day (which is a nice change from the weather in Boston lately).

I have spent the requisite time wandering around oohing and ahing about how things have changed and not changed.

What is that enormous thing behind Rand? What are they going to do to the Bill? What's in the old Commons now?

I remember waiting in line here so many times! My mailbox! Oh yeah, they've always had this piano in the lobby!

And so on.

I have seen a few people I know, and have snagged some free food. I have experienced life in a dorm that I didn't live in while I was here.

Can't ask for much more, right?

But more is to come, because later there's a parade. And some more food. I'm always afraid I'll be hungry at events, and then there's always more food than I can shake an engorged stomach at.

Also, I have two T-shirts already, and I don't rule out the possibility of more to come. This is important, because my current collection of T-shirts includes only about 200, of which I regularly wear the five that are on top of the pile, so I obviously need some more.

To push some of those five further down in the pile. Don't look at me, that's just how the system works.

It's interesting to be back, and to be remembering a phase of my life which now seems really long ago (but is not really, compared to the 65th and 70th reunion classes, who are also represented here). Am I going to be back here again 55 or 60 years from now?

Will they still have that piano in the lobby?

Only time will tell.

Big Fat Books and Tiny Thin Wallets

Some tips on avoiding the hefty fees of college textbooks, from Erika Price at Dangerous Intersection.

I am gratified to see that Your Library (and interlibrary loan) plays a prominent role.

Yes! Love your library! We're trying hard to make sure the books you have to read are here!

I checked out, rather than purchased, a few books when I was in college, although if enough other people have the same idea, copies can run low. I can heartily sympathize with the financial pain caused by having to buy expensive textbooks as a necessarily frugal undergrad, though.

Even though shiny new books were cool and exciting, and I hated reading through other peoples' notes and highlighting, saving a few bucks was key, and finding a used version, or borrowing one from someone who'd already taken the class, was the way to go.

Alas, I did not have blog posts to advise me back then, since I don't think the internet had been invented yet. Even our computers were just abacuses to which typewriter keyboards had been attached for some reason.

It hardly mattered, since if there had been an internet, I was too busy walking 10 miles to class uphill both ways through 12 feet of snow in my bare feet because I didn't have a nickel for the streetcar to know about it.

Did I mention my 90-year* college reunion is this weekend? Time flies when you're gettin' with the 21st century.

*OK, it's actually 10. I stand by my remark about the flightiness of time.

Forbidden Print

Stephen's Lighthouse presents a clever idea, inspired by the teenager who's running an "illegal library" of banned books out of his/her locker at school (like all the numerous people on whose blogs I've read about it, I love this--if the story is new to you, it's linked in the Stephen's Lighthouse post).

Stephen's idea is that ALA should get together a collection of the books banned by this student's school, in e-form, and provide it to school and public libraries for free in honor of Judith Krugman.

I like this thought, although schools that ban these books in print would presumably just decline to offer access to them in e-form as well, so I don't know that it specifically gets around any rules that way.

Not that it should even be our goal to thwart the regulations of private institutions. But we can certainly cheer on internal rebellion on the part of those directly affected, right? Which I certainly do in wishing the illegal library much success, and the students much enjoyment of their forbidden reading.

I did think it was amusing that the student includes Interview with the Vampire in the illegal library, but spurns Twilight. I'd be interested in a heated debate about the relative merits of these two texts--not necessarily as a participant, but for educational purposes--because they both seemed like wildly overdramatic hot-vampire-mystique froth to me.

Mmm, froth.