TED Community » Amanda Credaro

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Social Justice in Education

An idea worth spreading

The convergence of Information Technology, Information Science, and the impact on Information Literacy.

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Education, cognitive development, information issues, the Internet in education, Information Literacy.

Comments

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• A comment on Conversation: What is the future of libraries?

  Oct 6 2011: Hi Jennifer ... I haven't read through the 94 comments currently available, but I hope that someone has pointed out to you that not all libraries are funded to the same extent, nor do they all serve the same purpose.
  
  A "circulating library" such as a public or school library has neither the space nor resources to maintain effective archives. Did you know that it has been estimated that it costs approximately $40 a year to keep each book on a library shelf, whether it is being used or not?
  
  But you should not fear any loss of heritage - the Library of Congress has at least one copy of every book ever published in the USA. And always will, barring an major catastrophe.
  
  If you are speaking of academic libraries, I feel confident that the only journals etc that are been culled are ones with the same content available through databases such as Lexis Nexis - where they can be much more rapidly searched than is the case with print resources.
  
  Where are libraries heading? The same place they always were, since the times of the Alexandrian Library, but within the budget constraints that are beyond their control. There is no institution on this planet that is more committed to public access than Libraries.
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  A reply on Conversation: Is the internet, not formal education, the new great equalizer?

  Oct 6 2011: Hi Desi ... I think the point that needs to be made is that there are levels of education (Elementary or Primary, Secondary and Tertiary) - and you feel that your secondary education was of little value to you. However, it is the secondary stage - where you were assisted (although quite possibly not with the greatest attention to affective domain) to make the neural connections that you are now using at the Tertiary Level. In some ways, its a shame that metacognition is not given a higher priority in high schools - although to some students that in itself may lead to resentment as yet another "irrelevant" subject.
  
  I don't know what subject, or what university, you are enrolled - but I'd nearly bet money that if you're in a science rather than liberal arts faculty, you're going to find as you travel the journey that the Internet will not meet your tertiary education needs as much as your campus's library OPAC.
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  A comment on Conversation: Is the internet, not formal education, the new great equalizer?

  Oct 6 2011: The Internet is a huge reserviour of data - not all of it correct. Without formal instruction, Internet users are at risk of using inaccurate, unauthorative, outdated and possibly biased information. But "instruction" does not equal "education". As a teacher, I can spend a whole day in front of 30 students "teaching". Not all of them learn at the same rate; not all of them will retain the same data. Effective pedagogy would ensure that as many individual students as practicable reach as many of the desired learnin outcomes as possible. The Internet is not capable of such educational professionalism.
  
  In countries such as Australia, where Internet access is readily available to the greater part of the population, it does not achieve equity in educational outcomes. If you gave every student in a class a set of encyclopaedia, you would have the same (or possiblly even more) advantage in educational outcomes. And this would be achieved without the attendant risks of diversions (eg games, music, "chat" etc) let alone the "net nasties" that younger or more naive students lack the skill set necessary to cope with the confronting nature.