Paper 2.0 January 13, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Hardware.trackback
I’ve been interested in e-paper, or paper 2.0 to bring the phrase up to date, for many years now. For example, Xerox has been working on digital ink for a while now. Below is a link to a post by Vicki Davis on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog that summarizes some of the current efforts to bring digital ink to market, or at least to bring content to very small portable devices. The post includes some cool pictures of Polymer Vision’s Readius Handheld, as well as information about Amazon’s Kindle and other devices.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/01/paper-is-in-your-hand-hard-proof-of.html
I’d be interested to see in what you think the future of e-paper is in the classroom?
Thank you for the comment! What role do I see for e-paper in the classroom? That’s a great question. First, at some point, I think every student is going to need direct access to information. Not just the screen, prepackaged version that comes in most text books, but the rough draft of thought that exists out there. It isn’t practical to put all of that on paper. It is even less practical to try to put that much printed material in a student’s backpack. Some kind of digital interface is needed, whether that is a laptop, or some sort of Kindle device I think has yet to be determined. The device will need to be inexpensive, lightweight, and can be updated with new content simply and efficiently. It also needs to have a high resolution so that it is easy to read. The last thing a learner needs is to struggle because the content is too hard on the eyes. E-paper meets all of the above requirements, and would be an ideal mechanism for classrooms.
I also like the searchability of both the text but also the notes of the reader. The ability to mash up the text and highlight what is important (could you imagine the impact on authors when they are able to see some correlation of the “most highlighted” sentences of their work! What feedback it will give for future versions. We all become editors.
epaper is a great thing. This is an excellent conversation.