posted
The following isn't just purely speculation of what the future will be like, but has come out of a deep frustration with a lack of technology that would allow me to learn and understand new concepts and facts better.
I think wikipedia is a fantastic learning tool. What it allows you to do through the use of hyperlinking related encyclopedia content is a truly amazing innovation. I think we've all had nights on wikipedia, where you go and look up something you came across only to descend into ever increasing layers of pages, sometimes only tangentially related to your original concept...if at all. I will usually open up new pages in new tabs if I'm not going to be able read everything at once and plan on coming back to it. Some nights I'll end up with double digit tabs which I throw in a folder for later reading.
While the embedded picture in wikipedia are nice, it'd be cool if it could be more integrated with videos. youtube, aside from providing video of any inane thing you can possibly think of, also can be(and is) used for instructional and educational videos. In the spring I was learning about neuronal firing, and while wikipedia was great, youtube actually had some pretty helpful videos that helped with visualization of the processes.
My problem is that for me to learn and retain knowledge I usually need to be able to visualize it. And yet I have an extremely hard time visualizing things naturally. So when I'm reading a book I might have a hard time learning something because I can't "see it" or I'm missing more basic knowledge to understand it.
What I envision would be a truly interactive technology that mixed wikipedia like knowledge linking(for nested information gathering), something like answers.com(for word definitions), and youtube(for visual media to go along with the facts).
The visual aspect of it, I imagine a much more fluid and interactive way to present info. Instead of just prerecorded video, imagine if you were studying the human body, and you could see the outside of the body, and then zoom in to see the muscles, zoom in and see individual organs, zoom further and look at the cells, be able to rotate everything in a 3D environment, and watch things statically or in time. Imagine if you were learning about auto mechanics and you could see a car while it was running and zoom in and around each and every part, see how they function together, see what's going on internally, and all the while have explanations for how everything works at whatever level you desire.
Actually, writing this, I realize the librarian program in Snow Crash is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking of. When can we have that.
In the mean time I get by with firefox's use of tabbed browsing, my googlepedia add on, and my answers.com add on. While I think a completely fluid and interactive 3D learning environment is a ways off, some combination of networked knowledge with associated media should be right on the horizon.
And it'd be nice if I didn't have to sit near a computer to be able to look up words and read up on concepts while reading a book. The iPhone has proved very handy for this actually.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Here's a prediction involving the higher education portion of learning:
E-readers will absolutely and totally destroy the modern textbook industry. The reason why is that the textbook manufacturers, especially the infamous Texan textbooks, are gleefully exploitative and have been part of the upwardly spiraling cost of education. With e-readers, students will just begin pirating the crap out of textbooks. Given the state of current pdf piracy capacity right now, the shift may be sudden and massive.
Universities will probably begin mandating the purchase of e-readers, which nobody will care about because even top-end e-readers are much better than today's textbook costs.
fun fact: when I was writing this, I realized the massively vested interest I have in promoting this change. Last year alone I managed about a thousand dollars in textbooks alone and yes, I have come to hate the exploitative, gouging nature of today's textbook publishing practices in America. Given the opportunity for this change, I will remorselessly pirate textbooks.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Just wanna chime in on your last point there Sam- while it's true the textbook companies have not been especially successful in keeping the costs down, a lot of the blame for that, and for the practices you're talking about, rests with Universities and academic departments, not with the publishers.
Both my parents are in upper management in two major publishing firms, so granted their attitude reflects their positions, but they're also pretty realistic about the facts of this problem.
My mother especially has had to deal with the college textbook environment (she exec edits biology and psychology textbooks you have almost certainly owned) and here's the problem she describes:
Bio and sciences books need to be updated every so often. The nomenclature is always changing, the science is always advancing, and the teaching environment is always evolving as well. What happens is that in many schools, certain broadly taught subjects have different professors every year. These professors and their departments get to choose what already very pricey book all, say, 2 thousand students in that class that year or two are going to have to buy. The companies have to court these professors and schools to get them to adopt their textbooks into the curriculum, and as a result the companies start listening to what the professors want in the books. The professors very often ask for extras that are not reflected in the actual final product, such as text prep packets, new teacher's editions, not to mention holidays and other perks that the publishing companies give to stay competitive.
In a weird way, the power of these very few deciding voices drives the prices of ALL books sky high, because they are a market that cares absolutely nothing for price. Whereas normally you might expect competition to drive the prices down, the universities, especially the bookstores and student unions, make a higher margin on new sales and *especially* resales if the cost of the books stays high. So basically the scheme is, the Universities and the publishing companies make a lot of money by needlessly driving up the prices and the fluff surrounding textbooks, and the students always, *always* get the shaft.
But trust me, this is not a problem that would be solved immediately by e-books. The same motives for profiting from a captive market would still exist. Piracy would be easier, which would probably mean some kind of distribution limiting system.
Sorry for the rant, but I used to hear this kind of thing a lot in college and people never really looked around and realized that the school was taking advantage of them just as much as the publishers were, and most schools are ostensibly not supposed to be gouging the students out of every last penny- especially my school, which was a public university.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I always thought the biggest rip off was when professors had a "textbook" put together that consisted of several articles readily available from journals kept in my library. Because they were unique to the course, the bookstore could not buy them back. I once paid $45 for one of these books and we used it only once during the entire course. I could have gone to the library and copied the article in question for about $1.50. The class members complained to the department head over that one.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I once did pretty much exactly the same thing. Made me really angry- this freaking stack of articles cost about 50 bucks. They were ALL available online.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I hate that too. For my part, I've rarely used a textbook as a teacher in middle school or high school. The lit books are huge and unwieldy, the students hate carrying them and the teachers rarely required it. We taught using novels or short stories or poems that we printed out and provided class copies of. Much easier and better than using those stupid huge textbooks.
[ July 02, 2009, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: Belle ]
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: I could have gone to the library and copied the article in question for about $1.50.
The article was not under copyright? It might not have been, but if it was, that is part of what course packets try to avoid. A big part of the expense of the packets is obtaining permission to use the material included. And even if it is expensive, it is usually cheaper than legally buying all the book or journals that contain those articles or stories.
Some of this has changed with stuff being legally available online (and professors need to be aware of this), but not all of it is.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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From US Title 17 as it deals with copyright law and found here:
quote:§ 107·Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy-righted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copy-righted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
If I am reading this correctly, making a copy of a journal article for non-profit personal scholastic use (such as a student being advised by a professor that they need to read this article) constitutes fair use under copyright law. Assuming that is true, and that my school library contained the necessary articles (which it did 99.9% of the time) there was no need for the professors to have these books made.
You are correct in that the reason they are so expensive is that, when sold in bound format such as what you find in a college bookstore, they are a for profit sale, therefore permissions must be obtained to reprint and bind the articles. However, my understanding of this section of Title 17 indicates that this would not be the case if I simply took the article to the nearest library copy machine and made myself a copy.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
No, it generally doesn't constitute fair use, assuming the person doesn't have general access to the article (that is, if the library has an online subscription, printing is fine, but if there are only a finite number of physical copies, copying is not).
Don't try to interpret the fair use statute so broadly. It only lists things that should be taken into account, not overriding concerns. Given that the journals almost entirely make money by selling the journal articles to academics, and that they distinctly would be deprived of revenue by someone not making a course pak (see below), the general interpretation has been that copying, even for class use, isn't kosher.
The main reason the course paks cost so much is they include copyright clearance of all the works in them (at least, if done at a reputable copy shop).
So yeah, the ones available online are fair game to print (not by the professor for the whole class unless that's covered by the school's license, but by the individual students), but if they're only in physical form, copying the article wholesale is generally not okay.
This is one reason a lot of schools are doing e-reserves of hardcopy materials -- it makes the library the central copyright clearing house. All those ereserves articles cost the school money to put online for students in courses.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Don't the authors already receive compensation for their work if their journal is picked up by, say, JSTOR? It's on the internet, but it's only open to institutions that (I'm pretty sure) pay for it.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Academic authors generally don't receive compensation for their work (in the form of any sort of payment from journals). There are even a few journals that charge for submission.
The journal generally receives the copyright, or a broad license to it, and is the one being deprived of the revenue.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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