Teaching with Technology

E-book is a new niche in our technological life. It is a convenient new way for many people to store, recall and read many books in a single devise, some of which are portable. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the e-book that you buy in the open market and the one that some institutions allow you to use, such as the one at GMU library. I have purchased an e-book and used it, it is great. It gives you the ability to download books into your PC, laptop or any other machine such as the portable “Kindle”. The text of the book is yours whenever you want to access it as long as you have the machine that you loaded the text into. Also, you can load the software to multiple Hardware units for added convenience.
However, when it comes to an e-book that is offered by a school, I feel that it is horrible, reflecting my own experiences. These are my reasons for this seemingly harsh assessment:
• You can’t save the text on your PC, laptop or any other portable machine. GMU library has prevented this option.
• You can’t access the text of a specific e-book while others are using that e-book, i.e. no shared access is allowed. The library will send you a notice when the text will be available, (see notice below).
• It is not easy to open all pages.
Because of the previous reasons, the GMU school’s e-book system has become an annoying experience especially when:
• The instructor gives last minute assignments that you are expected to respond to, irrespective of your busy schedule.
• The additional pressure that last minute assignment causes in an already tense time as the end of the semester is approaching when students try to juggle and submit the assignments for the different courses they have.
As a teacher, I will not introduce a new technology unless I understand its’ pros and cons. I believe that the teacher should examine the new technology and go through the whole experience in different situations to better assess the usefulness of that new technology before it is introduced to the class. This is especially acute when the new technology represents an access tool that is not user-friendly and requires a lot of juggling of priorities to achieve the goal of exposure within a very short time.

e-Book attachment