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John Long

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From the RoundTable blog

Not long ago, I was browsing through an old Depression-era newspaper researching something when I ran across a notice about an exciting high-tech program being launched. A local radio station was going to start broadcasting a few minutes of educational programming each night, with discussion questions printed that day in the paper.

Presumably the students with radios would make that part of their homework and turn in the questions the next day at school. Classrooms were entering the information age!

It all sounds so quaint now. But I imagine for its day it was cutting-edge stuff. I thought of that archaic program the other day as I walked through the first-ever Roanoke College Technology Fair.

The event was sponsored by the wizards of our campus Information Technology office and The Center for Learning and Teaching, and was designed to demonstrate to the faculty the wonders of modern technologies and their educational applications. I was certainly impressed, but left wondering how much has really changed about the job of teaching.

Some of the technology on display was not terribly new or surprising, like cellphones and digital printing services. But other tables featured some interesting inventions that may well be standard equipment in the classroom of the future.

A lot of educators and students are very excited about the classroom response devices usually called clickers. They look, feel and act like a TV remote control, but they are designed to allow instantaneous communication between teacher and students.

Each student buys, along with his books that semester, a clicker for about $25; then registers it for the appropriate class(es). He then uses it to record his attendance (no more calling roll) and to answer questions, participate in discussions, take quizzes, etc. For a generation who cut their teeth on the remote control, this technology is second nature.

I thought it was cool, but I've never used the clickers and probably won't be integrating them into my classes in the foreseeable future. Class sizes at Roanoke College are reasonably small. If I taught at a school with 300 students in a course, I'd probably reconsider.

What really caught my attention, and something I see becoming standard fare in classrooms soon, is the Kindle, the digital book device that puts a veritable library in your hands. If you've never seen these contraptions, you soon will.

With a Kindle (or other competing version), you can download entire books by the hundred at a greatly reduced cost (compared to traditional hardback cover prices). And that's why I think this might be a wave of the future.

It is unconscionable what textbook publishers charge college students, who as a captive audience have little choice but to pay through the nose. But imagine a few years from now when students download their texts onto readers and carry around a single device instead of those massive bookbags.

But I'm not quite ready to jump on the Kindle bandwagon, either. For one thing, it's fairly new technology, which has to develop more before it becomes as ubiquitous as cellphones. The display (at least of the one I saw that day) is not quite there. Better full-color maps, illustrations, charts, etc. will all need to be part of Kindle textbooks in the future. For another thing, I like books: the feel of turning pages, the ability to jot notes in margins, the heft of the object itself in my hands. A well-downloaded Kindle just won't be the same for me. Besides, as a cheapskate who almost never pays full price for a book, the cost issue is sort of moot.

Now, I confess to being a history professor. We're by and large a stodgy breed, and I'm probably the stodgiest of the lot. Still, I left the technology fair duly impressed at the wonders of the digital age.

But when you get down to it, all the bells and whistles don't change our job description very much. They may even get in the way at times. Teachers have a certain body of knowledge that must be communicated to students. Along the way, we have to teach them not merely to absorb and recite facts, but to think for themselves. It was done, and done well, long before clickers and Kindles, and if they disappeared, it could be done again.

Even so, I'm glad I live in a world where, if I want to show a snippet of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," I can just call it up on YouTube.

Long, a Roanoke Times columnist, is director of the Salem Museum and teaches history at Roanoke College.