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Phil Darrin, Dean Academic Affairs, South Kent School: When took over wanted to get rid of stuff that was stale and never updated.  Changes focus from finding content to “what are you going to do with the content”. Makes them more willing to be engaged and more wanting to learn.  Orange County Schools, 500K students, considering going to tablets.  Kids coming to school now so familiar with technology that they are expecting something like this.  Wouldn’t have gotten to 92% digital if limited students to only one reading software.  Use several in the iPad – Kindle, Kobo, etc. Was important to use same textbooks that faculty was familiar with.  Expect to be 100% next year.  Love Inkling books because of the interactive model.   Went from a logistical nightmare to a logistical dream in handling textbooks.  The word “backorder” no longer exists.  Faculty doesn’t have to put in book orders early. Students spend 25% of their awake life online and so have to teach digital citizenship as a normal part of study.  Teachers can send syllabus in 3 months before school and this can be passed on to students easily long before the term.  Makes it easy to change quickly and add a book to the course immediately instead of waiting to order a book.  On demand content = relevant/real time.  Teaches history and was able to immediately integrate the Egyptian revolution into classwork as it was happening.  Thinks that adoption of ebook is inevitable. One of the reasons adopted was to be competitive – costs $42K/year tuition.  Makes them much more competitive in an environment as there are a lot of prep schools in the area.  Having the camera on the iPad allows the students to create content that is then put onto a campus website.  Does not replace paper – writing and papers are still part of it, but this goes another step farther. Teaching digital citizenship is important because kids can do a lot of stuff with an iPad and a camera.  Teachers have to be taught that kids multi-tasking is not disrespectful.  The quality of writing some teachers felt dropped because kids looked at the iPad as a texting device and this had to be dealt with.  

Gonzalo Garcio, CIO:  Before started kids were carrying 3 devices on their own.  Apple store called all the prep schools in the area to take a look.  Tried all the tablets and found that that with the iPad there was someone at Apple they could physically talk to.  Nobody to contact at Google – still waiting for them to get back to them.  Implementing the bandwidth was vital and the first problem.  Next problem was getting the faculty to sign on and get familiar with the iPad.  Gave them a 9 month a head start.  Kids pick up the devices much faster than the faculty.  Student training was not as difficult as they thought because they were all familiar with this stuff.  Dealing with publishers was kind of tough in the beginning.  92% digital.  A lot of public domain books can be had for classes for free.  In a class will be standardized on one version of a book and need to show the faculty members where free books are available.  Reduction in paper usage was by 75% and saved a lot of money.  Kids now send stuff as PDFs.  Students from 22 countries and this caused problems in in that kids from other countries couldn’t buy their books from iTunes overseas.  This required extensive negotiations with publishers.

Delano Williams, class of 2012:  saw the difference between the traditional classrom and the digital classroom.  In the digital classroom the classroom comes alive and information becomes collaborative instead of just have the information relayed to you.  Digital literacy is different for the kids than it is for their parents.  Trash the backpack!  Now walk to class with just one device.  The information in textbooks is dead, but the info in the iPad is alive and always changing.  Information is more secure than with textbooks because can download from iCloud. Can work on the go if miss a class.  Use multiple readers on the iPad.  For example some books are free on iBooks and might be charged for by Amazon.  Have book reports, and papers still, but now have video assignments.  .His english teacher had a problem dealing with iPad initially and asked for some stuff to be printed out.  Inkling has recording of how to pronounce stuff in their Spanish texts and this was very helpful.

2 COMMENTS

  1. There is a new report from the Association of College and Research Libraries (American Library Association) titled Scenarios for the Future of the Book. The report is interesting as it considers future scenarios that include useful roles for print books within digital libraries. The report is also helpful as it describes more responsible methods for projection of the future of the book.

    The report develops its scenarios using “Cross-impact analysis (that) is based upon the premise that events and practices do not happen in a vacuum and other events and the surrounding environment can significantly influence the probability of certain events to occur. Cross-impact analysis involves running each of the descriptors against each other.”

    So the scenarios are composites of circumstances that tolerate or even catalyze each other. Features of these scenarios are derived from surveys of ACRL Directors. Four scenarios are presented, three of which include a flourishing future role for print books within research libraries. The projection is only a few years out to 2020.

    Any librarian can imagine print books in 2020. Print publication and reader preference assure that future. The uncertainties derive from influences of hybrid print/screen services. From my perspective the four scenarios presented all evade a useful path for cross-impact analysis that was impeded by survey bias. Directors were not surveyed regarding the persistence of the very interdependence of print and screen books that they now know.

    What if print and screen books are the complements of natural library ecology?
    What if reader preference and technological advances will invigorate both delivery formats and neither print or screen books will flourish without the vigorous other?
    Such a scenario certainly confronts cross-analysis head on and, if ACRL Directors would agree, reflects conditions on the ground.

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