Tablets as Books?

 I’ve a new found love for reading the newspaper. As I was eating my Sunday lunch, sitting next to the fire, I was reading the local newspaper.  There was such simplicity in reading the newspaper as a hard copy, instead of reading it on a tablet or laptop. I was reading about different issues occurring in our surrounding area, and suddenly, I saw an article in the very corner of the page, it had to do with education and math. The article caught my attention, but as I was reading the article, I thought about how much our society has lost the simplicity of things because technology has consumed us. I stopped reading, and started writing. Maybe I have more of a negative vision of technology than I should, which I hope will change by the end of this course and as I acquire more information about technology and learning.

I thought about how a lot of students are reading books on tablets instead of actually reading the book hard copy. Isn’t there something so special about physically holding and flipping the pages while reading the book? I think so. Some of my fondest memories of elementary school were having my teachers read books to the class. I can’t even imagine teachers reading books in front of the class from a tablet. However, I do think that most teachers today still use many books in their classroom, which gives me a little bit of ease. I wonder if sooner than later, all of the books that we use in our classrooms will be in electronic copies, and students will not know any different than to read a book from a technological device. This thought is a bit scary for me. I hope we as teachers can live on a little bit of legacy with reading hard copy books in school to our students. It’s special for us as teachers and for students.