Thursday, August 18, 2005

No more pencils, no more books...

No more teachers' dirty looks.

Okay, scratch that last one. It's inevitable. Although it's unfortunate that the phrase "dirty look" attached to "teacher" has come to mean something entirely different in recent years. Anyway, I digress.

Check this article out:

Textbooks gone from Arizona high school

They've issued iBook laptop computers to all the students instead of textbooks. The article didn't say whether they're all wi-fi enabled or not.

I think it's an idea whose time has come. I am certainly finding the University of Phoenix system to be workable for me; they issue an e-text with each class, downloadable in PDF format, in either "Read" format or "Print Out" format, depending on your own preference.

As for the "no more teachers" thing, I think that might not be too far behind either... but I don't think that most kids at the high school level are prepared for the totally online learning environment. They need far too much supervision.

At any rate, this is an interesting development. I will be curious to see whether it catches on anywhere else.

No comments: