Our Digital Lives

   This summer, Claudia and I will be on vacation in Italy.  As I look back over the evolution of this trip, it's impossible to imagine planning it without an ongoing dependence on technology.

    The trip began to take shape last Thanksgiving.  We were in New Mexico with our college friends, Rick and Jan.  We've known them for 40 years, and have vacationed with them off and on over the years.  Last November, we hatched a plan to go to Italy together.  We talked about several different itineraries, but as we departed for NJ, nothing was set.

    We continued to exchange ideas via email and texts, and eventually a plan took shape.  Two weeks in Italy. The first week divided between Rome and Florence, the second week in the Tuscany countryside. And one more suggestion gave our plan a new twist; Rick and Jan asked if it was OK if their two sons went along.  We've watched the boys grow up and they're out of college now.  We like them both a lot so our reply was a definite yes.  They both live in California.

   So now we have six people going to Italy. They live in three different states across four time zones.  We need some technological assistance to make this work.  I set up a Google document, a spreadsheet, to help us stay organized.  The rows became the days of our travel and the columns information about the daily itinerary.  I shared the doc with everyone and gave them editing privileges as well.  Now we all had a place to put and adjust information at any time, 24/7. 

   A few years back, the four of us rented a cabin in Utah's canyon country so we could hike Zion and Bryce national parks.  We found the cabin through VRBO's web site. VRBO - vacation rentals by owner - lists thousands of properties around the world.  We found the site useful and accurate, and went back to it for our rental searches in Rome, Florence and Tuscany.  When a property looked interesting, we'd double-check the location using a map site like Google maps or Mapquest.  And after agreeing on a rental via emails, we'd book it, once or twice using PayPal as a down payment tool.

   Many sites in the two cities are best visited with pre-reserved tickets.  The Vatican, the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia can have long entry lines which can be avoided by pre-purchasing tickets.  Again, technology made this relatively easy.  But I found that occasionally, some information on a museum page was missing or not clear when I accessed the English translation page, so I went back to the original Italian language page and copied text into Google translate.  This translator answers my long ignored prayers from high school French class and offers an instant translation of text.

   The two major transportation costs, plane tickets and a car rental, were the objects of considerable online searching.  Neither costs can be considered fixed in that they can fluctuate regularly, steered by a variety of factors normal travelers can't parse.  The result is lots of online searching for the best price.  Travel sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Kayak can help.  They allow for quick comparisons of multiple offerings.  In the end, you book your flights and rent your car pretty certain that there's a better deal out there somewhere, but you no longer have the time or patience to try and find it.

   Knowing we were going to spend time with some of the world's great art collections, I decided to buy an app for my iPad, Art Authority.  It's a well conceived program that simulates a museum.  Artwork is organized by artist and period, and so, for instance, I can search Italian Renaissance art and view hundreds of pieces with information about the work and artist.  There are links to further information on web sites as well.  If my art viewing was to be done solely through a tablet app, I would consider that a dismal prospect. But as a prep tool, it's perfect.

   I also downloaded an app for my phone.  It was developed by the Uffizi Gallery for visitors.  In this app, I'll have the information we need to tour the Gallery knowledgeably and efficiently.  I'm currently in the process of searching for other such apps that might prove useful.

   With all of the bookings, we were operating in a world of Euros.  Prices fluctuate daily.  A helpful tool was a currency translator.  It's a common widget on current operating systems.  Plug in one currency and indicate your target currency.  As I write this, using a widget found in the Mac dashboard, 1 Euro equals 1.236 US dollars. It'll be different tomorrow.

   Is the digital approach to planning the only alternative? Of course not.  Rick mentioned a book by Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome, offered an unparalleled telling of the construction of the great cathedral dome in Florence.  Though I could have downloaded it on to an iPad, I chose to buy a paper copy.  I thought others in our group might want to read it, and it's hard to pass around an e-copy of a book. (The advice was sound; the book was terrific.)  And though this sounds obvious, there's really nothing like getting firsthand advice from friends who have been there before.  It can't get less digital than that.

   Still, it's hard not to see how helpful digital tools are when organizing a trip.  And the point is that digital tools are not just travel planning tools, they are the tools of our lives.  This is one important reason why technology should be infused into the curriculum.  If we're living digital lives, at least to some extent, then students should be fully conversant with the use of digital tools.  There's plenty of room for more traditional approaches to classroom learning as well, but to ignore the digital universe is to do a disservice to our students.  An exclusively digital-free learning environment denies students a familiarity with the world they will live in and work in.

A Consideration of E-Books

   I've spent plenty of time over the last couple of years considering books.  In particular, while I wonder about the sustainability of the old, print-based book model , I am also thinking about publishing's digital future.  
   My research has advanced on several fronts.  I've paid close attention to articles and essays investigating the paper/digital question. I've listened as adults and students have voiced their preferences. And I've made every effort to find out for myself.
   I have cultivated a reading habit for a very long time.  I always have a book going, and my house and office are littered with newspapers, magazines and the like.  And over the last ten years or so, I've found compelling online content to read every day.  For a reader, the internet is nothing short of spectacular.
   And over the last couple of years as I've gained access to digital readers, in particular the Kindle and the iPad, I've made it a point to broaden my approach to reading by including e-readers as delivery systems for the content.
   My first foray  into the world of digital reading was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  OK, not exactly an original selection, but it was already on the Kindle that was handed to me, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.  My guess is that if you're reading this, there's at least a pretty good chance you read the book. And if you're like me, you considered it a guilty pleasure, an eminently readable page turner without too much else going for it. I found that after the novelty of turning the pages by using my thumb to press on a small bar waned, I was simply reading a book.  I liked the way I could adjust the font size. The e-ink was easy on the eyes, with no noticeable eye strain after an hour or two of straight reading.

   I have read a few more books on a Kindle (but not on a Kindle Fire) and always the experience was the same.  I was simply reading a book, and almost immediately forgot to notice that the experience of Kindle reading was separate and distinct from the experience of reading a paper-based book.  For me, there was no difference as a reader.  But there are differences in other important ways.  The Kindle currently costs about $80, and every download will be an additional expense.  It's unclear how long the device or your downloads will be available for your enjoyment.  I have books in my house that are over 75 years old. Can I assume my Kindle books will last as long?  But I can also put hundreds of books on this small, lightweight device. It's very convenient......though it does need to be charged from time to time.  In short, there are advantages and disadvantages.

   And to compare, I made it a point to read several books on my iPad as well.  Several were like the Kindle books: .pdf versions of the paper text.  In other words, it's as if the paper book was copied in a copying machine, and some additional functionality was added.  I thought it only fair to read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson on an iPad.  Look closely at the example and you'll see options to change font size, search for words and bookmark your place. A random page looks like this on the iPad:

Really, not much to it.  Looks a lot like a book, right?

   On the Kindle I used, all books were .pdf versions of the print book.  The iPad readings were sometimes different, however.  Though the Jobs biography read much like a Kindle book, a version of The Beatles' Yellow  Submarine was quite a bit different. There was color and animation and sound resulting in a very different reading experience.  Here's a page with a drop-down that illustrates sound options:

 

Notice the control dashboard which allows you to customize your reading experience.

    This iPad book illustrates much of what I like in an e-book.  As they say in the tech world, it takes advantage of its ecosystem.  The iPad allows color and sound and animation, and the book embeds these functions.  Some will find reading this way more engaging, others more distracting.  I'm in agreement with the first group for this selection, though there are many books I've read where I would not appreciate additional bells and whistles.

   Educators are paying special attention to the promise of e-texts.  Many look ahead and see the day where students will not lug many texts from class to class but will rather carry one device housing all texts.  More importantly, to me at least, these texts will not be .pdf versions of existing print books.  They will be something different.  They will include embedded video, 3-D animated models, links to enriching web sites and interactive graphs.  Major publishers are hard at work developing these enriched e-texts, and some are coming to publication.  One leading edge publisher, Inkling, has a number of e-texts for academic use.  Their college-level Biology text includes the features mentioned above.  Here are two sample pages:

 

Notice Figure 3.13 above. Click on it to be brought to the animated 

3-D model of DNA (below) which offers a 360 degree view.

   Are iPads the reading device of choice? Not necessarily.  They simply do not work well outside; the glare overwhelms the image.  And they are noticeably more expensive than many other readers.  The battery life compares poorly to the Kindle.  But the image is crisp, and the ability to take advantage of multi-media content is impressive.  Again, there are advantages and disadvantages among devices.

   There is at least one other class of delivery device that grows in popularity daily: phones.  I know it stretches the imagination of some, but it is true that many  people find great convenience reading a book on their personal phone.  I've tried it and rejected it.  For my eyes, the small image results in eye strain after ten or fifteen minutes of reading.

   In a school setting, we also have to consider how texts are used.  They are more than books to be read.  They often become places where notes are written or content is highlighted.  Do e-texts serve the study needs of students? E-texts typically have the basic functionality a student would expect.  Highlighting text is simple.  Notes can be taken in the margin, though here, the process is somewhat cumbersome. Being able to search a word or term and find where it appears in a section, or in the whole text, is valuable.  But all in all, I gather that most students find a printed text more user-friendly, though there is plenty of varying opinions on this question.

   Where do I stand now?  On the topic of reading a book, e-books work as well as printed books.  Buy a book, take one out of the library, download one to your Kindle or iPad or other device; to me, it's all the same.  In the end, there is still the fundamentally satisfying experience of reading a book.  On the subject of e-texts, my conclusion is different.  Fully functional multi-media e-texts hold tremendous promise as an improvement over current print texts.  But we're literally at the very beginning of this transition, and for most subjects in most grade levels, good e-text choices are not yet available.  From what I hear, the landscape is likely to be quite different in the coming years.  I would think that five years from now, it will be commonplace for a student to access a text from a computer or other reading device and use that text to read, view and listen.  Text learning as a multi-sensory experience has the potential to alter the learning experience in profound ways. It'll be interesting to see how text content and use evolves in the years ahead.