Reed Magazine February
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2003

Clearly, the Reed faculty is working hard to meet the challenges of new and emerging electronic tools and use them to their students’ best advantage. Where is it all headed? Are textbooks and chalkboards soon to be a thing of the past?

There may well come a day when every scientific and literary journal is fully accessible on the web, Marianne Colgrove says—but we’re not there yet. “There are some messy legal issues,” she says. “The industry hasn’t figured out reasonable pricing and licensing structures.”

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And what about the college bookstore of the future? Are we in for shelf after shelf of digital chips? Not for a while, Colgrove says: “It’s still really hard to read material on a screen. According to the reports I’ve seen, people read up to 50 percent slower on screen than in print. Think about it: screen resolution is usually around 72 to 100 dots per inch, while an entry-level laser writer is 300. It’s hard on the eyes.”

That’s one reason web content tends to be brief and easy to grasp quickly. “Students become adept at finding things on the web and their first instinct is to look there,” Colgrove says, “but they can’t sit down and read in the same way as a book—or get the same depth of information.” As display technology matures in the next five to 10 years, she predicts, we may see high-resolution electronic readers you can carry around. “A college bookstore could be dramatically different.”

In the meantime, Reed faculty and students are enjoying being part of the transition to a new way of teaching and learning. “Going digital,” Makley says, “has freed me up for a lot more discussion time.” And that’s what it’s all about.

“ Reed is a unique place because it holds the learning process in the highest possible regard,” says Marty Ringle. “Technology here, like every other support service, is totally dedicated to enhancing our curricular mission. Ultimately, everything comes back to that.” End of Article

Kate Hobbie is a freelance writer. She last wrote about Gary Rieschel ’79 in the November 2001 issue.

 

Reed Magazine February
Go to Page 1 go to page two go to page three go to page 4 go to page 5 go to page 6 Page 7, you are hereLink to Reed Mag  Home
2003