No more printing of learning content?

As much as I support and champion electronic delivery of learning content, I know that the majority of lengthier material is printed and read offline, where it can be annotated, highlighted, and tossed in a backpack to be read on the bus. While I spend most of my working day and a good chunk of my evenings consuming materials from a screen, I wouldn't consider starting a novel or even a lengthy article by curling up with my laptop.

I've been keeping an eye out for technologies that could make reading large quantities of digital material less eye-aching and have been watching the development of Sony's electronic paper-based reader for some time and it looks set to finally be available for purchase. The Reader is a paperback sized tablet device with uses technology called E Ink for its black and white display, rather than the LCD screens of laptops and PDAs.

Instead of rows of glowing cells, E Ink® microcapsules actually appear as either black or white depending on a positive or negative charge determined by the content. The result is a reading experience that'’s similar to paper - high contrast, high resolution, viewable in direct sunlight and at a nearly 180-degree angle, and requiring no power to maintain the image.

While the design of the casing leaves room for improvement, the technology is so wonderfully simple and effective, I can't help but think about how tools like the Reader could change the way text-based learning content is consumed, and for that matter, the way academics libraries provide resources. No word on retail pricing yet, but with a September release in the US advertised, I will definitely keep watching this one. Just think of the trees that could be saved.

On blogging and student engagement

Konrad Glogowski posted today on his experiences in establishing a "community of grade eight student bloggers". He writes with excitement and enthusiasm about how his students went from being solitary writers, to leveraging off the knowledge of their peers to deepen and broaden their own understanding. He writes:

I noticed that Student A, writing about genocide in Darfur, started following and linking to the work of Student B who was investigating current human rights abuses. Student A did not learn anything new about genocide from Student B, but she did learn a lot about efforts (or lack thereof) to stop hatred, violence, and discrimination. Entries about human rights abuses taking place all over the world (including the so-called developed nations) were helpful in expanding her understanding of why violence erupts, of why we are not effective at stopping it. Both continued to pursue their own topics but relied on each other to gain a better understanding of human nature, of discrimination, of official responses to these issues.

Read the full post here.

There's been a bit of blog madness happening around the place here, most of it creative and innovative, some of it being driven from a new(ish) buzzy technology. I'll be converting a spare server into a 'miscellaneous web applications' server this month to allow us to organic experimentation with in-house hosted open source tools such as Wordpress. Must write up guidelines for use too, although the last thing I want to do is squash enthusiasm with policy.