Tag: books

Is the “page” dead or are we just getting started?

iPadsPublished on1 Comment on Is the “page” dead or are we just getting started?

One of the interesting points made by Anthony Salcito, the VP of Education for Microsoft, during his talk at Learning Without Frontiers, was about the persistance of the page in digital formats.

He referred to the bookshelf look of iBooks and the animated page turn in digital books. Salcito asked why do we need this in the digital form? Why does this analogue construct persist in the digital representation of text?

I have recently enjoyed reading some of the the early Sherlock Holmes stories on my iPad and I like the way I can personalise the look and feel of the text. The page turn animation and control is always quite nice too. But are we just being unnecessarily nostalgic about this and in fact limiting what can be done with text in the digital form by sticking to this traditional notion of the “page”? Are we not being ambitious enough?

I think it was either Anthony Salcito himself or Steve Wheeler on Twitter who referred to it as a behavioural artifact:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/timbuckteeth/statuses/162560661866561537″]

And thrown into the mix was of course our love of the ‘desktop’ which was shared by Andy Powell.

The discussion about pages in digital text reminded me of the following video of further development of the user interface of the eBook, a prototype from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Skimming through the pages of a book, a feature that was previously unavailable with e-books, is also possible through 3D rendering of the contents on the pages being flipped. A bookmark function allows users to conveniently go back and forth between pages of interest. In addition, the system has a “multi-touch” function as well as a smart capability of recognising dragging time, finger pressure, and finger gestures.

Professor Howon Lee said,

“I hope that our technology will accelerate the wider use of e-books and contribute to Korea’s endeavours to lead the development of software application technology for mobile devices.”

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But is this simply innovation in the wrong direction? Does it just perpetuate a form factor that limits what can be done on digital devices? Or is the 1000 year old idea of a page going to be with us for another millennium and beyond?

A History of Teaching and Learning from 500 Billion Words

Data, GooglePublished onUpdated on2 Comments on A History of Teaching and Learning from 500 Billion Words

 

learning v teaching

 

By analysing over 500 billion words the Google Books Ngram Viewer allows you to compare the history of terminology and language from approximately 5 million digitised books.

The graph above shows my search for the terms “teaching” and “learning” in publications between the years 1500 and 2010.

What fascinates me is how the popularity or usage of the different terms climbed and fell throughout this period. The term “Teaching” has been used more frequently since the turn of the 18th century, somewhat settling into a plateau in the last 60 years. In comparison the term “learning” seems to have more of a rollercoaster frequency in the last 500 years.

References to “learning” from 1800 fell notably in the following 100 years, to a point where “teaching” was referenced more. And then began a 75 year period where “teaching” was clearly more frequently used or referred to in published literature. Why would there have been such a decline or change in frequencies?

If you look at the references to “learning’ there seems to be some peak and trough pattern amidst an upward trend. I wonder why this was the case? Similarly why did references to “learning” fall away at the turn of the 19th century only to climb steadily again in the last 100 years? What perceptions of “learning” or cultural differences were there between the 1700s (“learning” references increase) and the 1800s (“learning” references decrease.)?

I am no historian and I am sure many of you reading this will be able to explain the information better than me – needless to say it would be interesting to explore any broad reasons or background that might effect such results.