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By Michael Lines

Cushing Academy in New England has decided to get rid of an outdated technology and embrace the future.

Says its Headmaster: “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books”

Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a ?learning center,?? though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

Some good points in this article, especially these two:

Unless every student has a Kindle and an unlimited budget, I don?t see how that need is going to be met,?? Fiels said. ?Books are not a waste of space, and they won?t be until a digital book can tolerate as much sand, survive a coffee spill, and have unlimited power. When that happens, there will be next to no difference between that and a book.

It seems that money may not be an object.

And:

William Powers, author of a forthcoming book based on a paper he published at Harvard called ?Hamlet?s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal,?? called the changes at Cushing ?radical?? and ?a tremendous loss for students.??

?There are modes of learning and thinking that at the moment are only available from actual books,?? he said. ?There is a kind of deep-dive, meditative reading that?s almost impossible to do on a screen. Without books, students are more likely to do the grazing or quick reading that screens enable, rather than be by themselves with the author?s ideas.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).