The Disappearance of Books from School Libraries

The Room for Debate blog at the New York Times featured a very interesting discussion this week about the choice that Cushing Academy recently made to dispense with all the books in their library. If you didn't hear, the school recently made the choice to get rid of the books in their collection [mostly donating them to community organizations]. They're now using the space for a 'learning center' that focuses primarily on electronic resources.

Technological Literacy: The Most Important Gift We Can Give to Children

Few things are as inspiring as watching a kid soak up information. They can process new ideas and concepts at a staggering velocity. From a young age, the children of the world are bombarded with things to learn. These learning experiences come from a wide range of sources: for starters there's the education system itself, the ubiquitous advertising industry, and the unparalleled influence of parents. Despite the positive or negative influence of these large-scale educational efforts, there's a much deeper education going on behind the scenes. Both implicitly and explicitly, kids learn on their own, and they teach each other what they know.

For the better part of the last three decades, that's the main way kids have learned about technology. Like sex education in the 1950s, technology in the 80s and 90s was a subject most parents hardly ever broached with their children, and was only taught in schools in the most broad, generic terms.

Comic Weighs in on the Debate Over Reading Online

Do prefer to read real, physical paperbound books over electronic devices? Or are you one of the Kindle, iPhone, or even laptop reading converts? Debate over whether or not ebooks provide a satisfying reading experience has been going on for years, long before the Amazon Kindle ever debuted. But with the popularity of modern ebook readers, the discussion around this topic has exploded.