I still vacillate greatly on the issue of eBooks. My concern has less (and less) to do with the experience of reading. I greatly enjoy reading on my Kindle DX or iPad or iPhone or my netbook or most anything. I’m much more concerned about the long-term ramifications of DRM and content-lock-down (or editing) by [...]
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Losing Ourselves in (Text)Books
by Sam Harrelson on 09. Aug, 2010 in Books, Education, Technology
Socrates famously rejected the supposed importance of the written word(1) in the Phaedrus. I wonder what he would have had to say about blogs and twitter? David Weinberger has a post on a book which I’ve just put on my Wish List, The Coming of the Book. Looks fascinating from the quotes he’s published: Joho [...]
Sam I Am
by Sam Harrelson on 25. Jul, 2010 in Books
Dr Seuss is the Steve Jobs of books: Green Eggs and Ham – Wikipedia: “Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’s publisher, wagered $50 that Seuss could not write a book using only fifty different words. The bet came after Seuss completed The Cat in the Hat, which used 225 words.” I had no idea. Cutting the fat [...]
Voided From History
by Sam Harrelson on 22. Jul, 2010 in Books, Philosophy
I’m still trying to reconcile Faulkner with my own existence at the behest of Larry McGehee. This particular admonition from Faulkner still haunts me: It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to [...]
Can’t Wait to Read This
by Sam Harrelson on 18. Jul, 2010 in Books, Education, Science
I’m terribly excited to head to the local bookstore to pick up Sam Kean’s new book on the periodic table today. For some strange reason, I find the periodic table a fascinating symbol of humanity in our continuing attempts to understand the universe around us. There is much more than just chemistry wrapped up in [...]
Textbooks Must Die
by Sam Harrelson on 17. Jul, 2010 in Books, Education, Open Source, Technology
Exactly what I’m doing this year with my 8th Grade Physical Science students… A Classroom Experiment: Ditching a Textbook – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education: “I’ll be replacing the traditional ‘conflicting viewpoints’ textbook, though, with materials gathered from a variety of resources: the web, the news media, the popular press, and more traditional [...]
GriffinScience Text(s)book
by Sam Harrelson on 13. Jul, 2010 in Books, Education, Open Source, Philosophy
I’m working on our GriffinScience Text(s)book for next “year” (not sure why we call them school years…) and it’s coming together nicely. We aren’t going to be using a standard textbook for many reasons. Cost is one, but the assumption that science can be learned via a medium like a textbook is antithetical to the [...]
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