Who Needs Paper? Not Iowa College

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,53747,00.html">http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,53747,00.html</a><br /><br />Sonny-boy, back in MY day, we had to walk uphill both ways to get to the library - and that's the way we liked it!<br /><br />"Students at an Iowa college can forget the quintessential experience of pulling all-nighters at the library poring over stacks of books. For one thing, there's no library. For another, there are no books. The Des Moines Area Community College's West Des Moines campus is the newest of the college's six branches. It opened last fall with the mission to collaborate with companies to beta test education technologies. <br /><br />Instead of a library, the school has a resource center equipped with computer workstations that can access the Web, e-books and online journals. The resource center also houses several meeting tables, audio-visual materials and a few paper magazines -- but no books.<br /><br />The school plans to be an entirely paper-free campus. Last year, about 75 telecommunications students participated in a pilot program to go paperless. Each student used a Compaq iPaq handheld to access e-textbooks, syllabi and class materials, and to take notes and exams." Source: Foo Fighter

[Ashley Dunn]

That is SO cool! What I wouldn't give to have a paperless educational experience. My back suffers enough already from all the text books and paper I have to carry around.

In one of my classes last semester, Technical Writing, every student in the class got a pile of handouts roughly 3 inches high. No joke. The teacher had absolutely no regard for trees or for our backs! He was a great teacher, mind you.

Anyway, I find it amusing to a point, then frustrating, to have my classmates asking me, "Is that a Palm?" all the time, and having to explain that no, it's not. It's WAY better than a Palm. Fortunately, most of them understand what it is now. I just think it would rock if everyone in my class had a device to use, rather than having to write notes on paper.

Ah...I love my SHARP Handheld. :-)

Hmmm...Mount Royal College, the post secondary institution I'm attending in Calgary, is doing a bunch of renovations over the next few years...perhaps I can get a meeting with the Dean... :wink:

[JJ]

The small screen on Pocket PC would be pretty tough for open book exams...

[rubberdemon]

I can see this being a great idea for journals, handouts, assignments etc. - my university (UBC) is already setting up a campus-wide 802.11b network and I imagine if everyone was wireless, there are a lot of cool applications that could run.

However, I don't think we should be chucking out the books just yet. Libraries full of books are one of the great pleasures of life - and browsing through them can give all sorts of serendipitous results. Also, great as the web may be, it's not the best place to do a lot of research - books still win in this regard (at least until all books are available as e-books).

[Ashley Dunn]

I agree, rubberdemon. My biggest complaint is, and has always been, the stress the books cause to my back. I have enough problems with it as it is!

And as for the small screen on a Pocket PC, yeah, good call. Maybe if this idea takes off, companies will build devices more like the handhelds. They're small, have a full size keyboard and a screen large enough to do considerably more work on.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed! :turn-l:

[mmidgley]

:P Paperless libraries, schools, and beyond sounds like a fabulous idea to me. I like the idea of accessing things on my iPAQ. I'll have to admit that as convenient as that would be, the small screen and input ability would be trouble in some circumstances. They would have to also involve wireless slate/tablet PCs, and of course desktop systems around campus. If I could access the same content on all these devices, and regardless of location (at home, actually on campus, or on a space station) then it would be a big hit! This should help get more books out as eBooks. Starting with a university is probably the way to start this potential radical change...

m.

[Gremmie]

This is where Pocket PC's User Group will be meeting (starting Sept 12, go to groups.yahoo.com/pocketpciowa for details ;) ) I walked around for a tour and they said for anyone who doesn't like just paperless, they do have alternatives as an option.

[Certified Optimist]

The paperless library is a great idea, but is has its challenges...

It works great as long as you're reading one book at the time, but... when it's time to write a paper on something you will usually want to compare what different authors are saying about the same subject... and that's when traditional books will usually be easier to use.

Say you've found three authors that seem to be knowledgeable about the subject and they've all written one book each... Right. To do this in the paperless library (on a PC) you would need to split the screen in four, so you can use one window to read each book while typing your paper/notes in the fourth (or maybe even on paper - "the horror, the horror".). And I am not even going to get into doing this on a PDA... (unless you happen to have 4 of them...).

Alternatively, you could print the particular pages you are interested in and type away somewhere else. Then again... this kind of spoils the point of having a paperless library in the first place...

Now if you were using traditional books you could get all three books, find the pages where they are discussing the same thing, lay them next to your computer and start typing away.

But... then again... the huge disadvantage with a paper library is that they will only have a limited number of copies available of each book... so you can be sure someone else has borrowed the book you so desperately need...

So... what I'd prefer is a combination of both... all books available both in e-format as well as paper. That way you can get the best of both worlds.

[Gremmie]

They do have a somewhat limited paper library. A lot of periodicals.