Thinking through the chaos of change

September 9, 2014

I just had a Fahrenheit 451 experience. I heard a story on NPR about an all electronic library at Florida Polytechnic University. The reporter was interviewing a librarian there. The librarian commented that the students had no problem with the concept of an all electronic library but the parents were shocked to see a library with no books. The librarian explained that they were preparing students for the future, and horrifically it seems that future will have very few books in it. This seems downright creepy, even to one who spends her days on the frontlines with these cyborgian millenials. However, it's been my observation for some time that professors and their students come from very different cultures. We professors, particularly the geezers, come from a book based culture, whereas our students come from a web-based culture. This can be quite a challenge. In fact, this accounts for one of the reasons students don't write or read as well as they might have in the past. They are not readers in the sense we were. Their experience of reading is the fragmented pastiche of knowledge known as the world wide web. In their web-based reading experience any word can lead to an entirely different world. The linearity and grammatology of the book is disappearing. Today's students expect, and are comfortable with, an online environment. This is just one more reason to be telling their own stories in cyberspace. ePortfolios help students to do this.