Just returned from BookExpo in NYC. The push was for --you know what--digital books. Wow! It’s about time. In 1995 when we introduced our first digital version of New Perspectives on Computer Concepts, I remember one editor stating with conviction: “Students don’t want to read books on screen.” If that characterization ever was true, it certainly has changed and now students are obsessed with their screens.
But what, exactly, are student expectations about digital textbooks? Why do students want them? The answer comes clear in the context of all the free information that is available online. To students, online means free, or at least really cheap. They’d rather a cheap textbook than a good one, or so it seems. Although they live in a society powered by information, students do not put much value in it. What’s up with that?
In DBTS (Days Before the Screen), information required work. You had to find it in a library, by phone, in a bookstore, or by word of mouth. You often had to record it (write it down) or remember it so that you didn’t have to find it again. Obtaining information required work, and that effort, I think, made the information acquired worth something.
In today’s wired world, getting information requires little effort other than a quick Google search or Wikipedia query. And there is no reason to record or remember information if you know it can be located again with another simple search.
We, as teachers, are dealing with a different learning mindset produced by this brave new digital reality. When students don’t value information, not only do they want free textbooks, they also don’t see value in obtaining information through the learning process. Why learn the history of the American Revolution when you can query Wikipedia for an excellent synopsis? Why memorize the definition of SSD when you can Google it?
Educators faced an analogous problem when inexpensive digital calculators became widespread. “Should we allow students to use these calculators?” they asked. Then, because the answer was “yes,” some educators and many students jumped to the logical conclusion that it was no longer necessary to learn how to do mental arithmetic or memorize multiplication tables. And know what? It works--at least when there is a cash register, calculator, or smartphone at hand.
It works, but at what cost? As an example, suppose you check out at WalMart and hand the clerk a $50 bill for your $42.90 purchase. The register tells the clerk give this customer back $7.10. And so, with out any thought, the clerk does so. The job of cashier, which once required some skill, now requires very little expertise. It is easy to replace those cashiers with self-checkout machines. Cashiers become free to pursue more challenging jobs or join the unemployment lines.
So back to our students. Does it matter that in our brave new online world, we can’t get facts to “stick?” Can we allow students to complete their education without having a body of knowledge in their brains as long as they can access all the Internet’s knowledge with their fingers?
I’m going to say “no” because I believe that humans need to internalize a body of knowledge in order to make decisions relevant to their lives and to develop valid opinions on the critical issues of our time.
As educators, we have to figure out how to convey this idea to students. Part of our mission is to identify that core of information; the other part of our job is to engage students in activities that demonstrate the sort of multidisciplinary mashup they can produce given a functional core of information.
We’ve got to get beyond keystrokes here; in the big picture of things, the steps for creating mail merge or a pivot table are surface knowledge. What are the underlying concepts about technology that educated people need to know in order to make informed choices in our digital world?
Think about that. More anon.
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