Another Movie Thread - Because We Love Them So

[kandrathe]

It's never too late to right some wrongs.

Well, she already paid $170 for the fine on $60 worth of books, (assuming they're hard cover). Revoke her library card! No need to get medieval on her. If I were making the library policies, I'd just set the "you bought it price" at 2x cost(value) to cover the inconvenience to the library. Unless the book was out of print, and irreplaceable. What is ignorant is that she should realize that Amazon.com would be a cheaper for her, and her entire lack of responsibility. I expect that her karma will catch up with her in other areas of her life, where disobeying the rules will have dire consequences, for example, when paying her taxes.

Here is where e-books will eventually rule; Your subscription to read the book would just expire. There is no need to go to the library to get the book, or return it. Our school library has a few very sophisticated scanners, and a cataloging system. For the past few years were been acquiring more electronic titles than traditional media. The only thing holding them back is the TB's of disk space they need. What's nice for students is the card catalog and e-media are available through their internet portal. Our library's electronic materials are interconnected to most of the other colleges in the State. If it exists in any of them, everyone has access to view it simultaneously.

Hence, why Netflix on demand works better for me. Most newer movies now go to electronic distribution, and it's only the older, and less popular titles that I need to rent on DVD. So, when I must absolutely see "Citizen Kane", or "12 Angry Men", I just need to be patient for a day or two for it to come in the mail. And, for returns, I've been forcing myself to take it from the DVD player immediately after viewing, packing it back up, and bringing it out to the mailbox right away. Otherwise, it tends to gets lost in the house clutter and we find it a month later in the "Paid Bills" folder awaiting filing. But, for electronic books, I also have the PC e-reader for Kindle, Itunes (for podcasts), and Audible. I haven't jumped into an e-book machine yet, although I'm keenly interested in the hardware wars between iPad vs Kindle vs Nook etc.

At the college where I work, I've done research on the whole electronic "text book" phenomenon, and I've given recommendations for our current official academic position... Which is; we see it as a valuable part of the integration of a comprehensive technology assisted curriculum where the course materials, the curriculum, learning, and assessment are all integrated online, and available to the mobile environment. We have a cadre of e-learning specialists available to help professors adapt their courses toward a blended learning strategy which transforms a traditional course to enhance the face to face, group online, and individual online pedagogy. We've opted for a more protracted, experimental approach to ease our faculty toward this change and by being very selective on which courses we choose we can demonstrate just how innovative and successful this approach can be. For example, more online learning for Studio Arts would not improve pedagogy, while more peer interaction in studying history may improve the teaching/learning experience. I think most importantly, it forces the instructors to seriously challenge their traditional rubrics in measuring student outcomes. A thirty page essay on the Napoleonic Wars may not be the only method for measuring if a student understands history, although it may be a good measure on how well a student writes a thirty page essay. I'm also on the assessment steering committee, so I'm involved in measuring the success of these experiments as well.