By Sean Scarpiello
This upcoming summer, my college is planning a new renovation of our library on campus. Since a good deal of money is being spent to upgrade the library, the administration of the college has been questioning the students about the sorts of changes we would like to see. Recently, between some of my friends, there has been a debate on what the library should keep and what should go. The overall question we are trying to answer is, “What are future libraries going to look like?”
Most of our library debate is focused on the books in the library. There are floors of shelves filled with old books. Most of these book look as if they haven’t been open for years. After some thought, I realized that I had never even checked out a book from the library. The only time I used a source directly from the college library was to read cutting edge biology articles from science journals. After making this discovery, I talked to some of my peers to see if they have signed books out of the library. For the most part, they had not checked out any books either. However, my friends who had checked out books described that they ultimately ended up online at GoogleBooks. Here, they were able to simply find the books the library had in print form, and do an automated search through the book. I have also used this resource for classes because it enables students to spend less time thumbing through hundreds of pages looking for a few informative pages.
For some courses like biology, psychology, and other sciences, there are few if any books to be used as sources in paper. This is due to the fact that new scientific breakthroughs are occurring every day. The new innovations make the old material obsolete, so there is no real purpose to having books on these topics. For other topics, such as political science, economics, and history, there are a multitude of books which are also slowly expiring. Scientific breakthroughs in DNA and other fields of science allow us to better understand our past in new ways. Perhaps it would be better to have a library of scientific journals and books on certain, slower progressing fields.
Some of my peers think there should be no books in the library at all. We could move to a library full of computers hooked up to online libraries and databases which are easy to access and quite possibly cheaper. The lack of physical books would free up a lot of space for these computers and study lounges. Also, students would be able to write papers more efficiently as they would not need to look through pages of books; looking for the needle in the haystack of information. Free tools such as GoogleBooks already have a program which allows limited access to thousands of books. College students everywhere are using these resources so they can spend less time in the library. It would only make sense to make this transition, yet some are still skeptical about going completely electronic. What do you think?
Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday, September 30, 2011
A Boost in Online Education
By Sean Scarpiello
Recently in the field of higher education Carnegie Learning, a company that designs cutting edge online math tutorials, was bought by the company that owns the highly popular online college, University of Phoenix. Therefore, we can expect an increase in the amount of online educational programs in the future. This will bring education to more people in more places at a very low price. This will also change the current infrastructure of higher education as we know today.
How will this effect higher education in the long run?
First, increased availability of online learning means that it will be extremely cheap to educate millions of people. This will be great for individuals because everyone will have the opportunity to learn. It is also great that Carnegie Learning is creating this ground breaking program because it will definitely be a success. This company has scientists whom have studied the ways humans think and learn; therefore, the programs that they make are very personalized and designed to be successful for each individual student. Since these programs are so personalized, students will learn quickly and efficiently and thus at a lower price.
These new programs will also affect the typical four year college greatly. Colleges need a campus, dorms, professors, labs, dining halls, libraries and much more. Online education requires only a computer and an internet connection. Therefore, online education institutions do not need to worry about funding for all the other aspects of college. They deal with the class being taught which allows students to avoid spending a small fortune on a college education. This will pose a problem for many colleges and universities that have not yet kept up with the rising popularity of online education. These programs will literally steal students from campus due to their lower prices.
One may argue that online education is a joke and that students will not flock to these programs because there is a lack of prestige associated with these programs. Some large universities have already invested in these new technologies and they will be the ones to survive this new change. When it comes to this shift from the campus to the online classroom, I feel as if it will be gradual at first and pick up a lot more support in the following years. We cannot expect a change overnight, but within the next four years, expect a different norm for higher education. This also does not mean that students will never step foot in a classroom again, but students will definitely spend less time in class and more time learning on their own with these programs.
The Carnegie Learning programs will change the way that students are graded in school. This will definitely have an effect on the jobs and futures of students after they graduate. For example, someone with a B+ in an MIT calculus class will be looked on more favorably then someone with the same B+ who goes to a less prestigious school. With these cutting edge programs, someone who took a class on economics in California will have taken the same exact class as students in New York. This also means they took the same tests and completed the same assignments and can be graded equally when it comes to securing a job.
Overall, the rising popularity of online education has now gotten a large boost and we can expect to see a general shift towards online classes in the future. Not only are they cheaper, but they bring a higher standard of education to more people worldwide.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
New Madera Co. high school a model of the future
By Chris Collins / The Fresno Bee
O'NEALS -- Outside the high school library, a student carrying a camera grabbed Principal Michael Niehoff's attention. "Give me your game face," he said before snapping a picture.
Minutes later, the principal's photo -- his face scrunched and lips pursed -- had been uploaded onto a computer, posted onto an ad for a staff-versus-student basketball game, and broadcast on big screen TVs throughout this tiny, tech-savvy campus in Madera County's foothills.
This is Minarets High -- the county's newest high school and a model for what public education might look like in the future.
Here, every student gets a laptop. Classes are focused on group projects instead of homework and lectures. After school, students and teachers text each other and use online tools to complete assignments. The library, called the media lounge, is furnished like a coffee shop with large windows and couches. The books are packed in a few rows of shelves in a corner.
In PE class, students ride mountain bikes on nearby trails or jump over classmates in team-building exercises. When teachers go to conferences, they take students with them to help with presentations. And almost every student has a laminated profile posted in the school hallways. It features their name, age, interests -- and GPA.
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