Entering the Medium: The Reckoning That is Paperback!

From Barbara Ehrenreich's, Nickel and Dimed,

I was baffled, initially, by what seemed like a certain lack of get-up-and-go on the part of my fellow workers. Why didn't they just leave for a better-paying job, as I did when I moved from the Hearthside to Jerry's? Part of the answer is that actual humans experience a little more "friction" than marbles do, and the poorer they are, the more constrained their mobility usually is. Low-wage people who don't have cars are often dependent on a relative who is willing to drop them off and pick them up again each day, sometimes on a route that includes the babysitter's house or the child care center. Change your place of work and you may be confronted with an impossible topographical problem to solve, or at least a reluctant driver to persuade. Some of my coworkers, in Minneapolis as well as Key West, rode bikes to work, and this clearly limited their geographical range. For those who do possess cars, there is still the problem of gas prices, not to mention the general hassle, which is of course far more onerous for the carless, of getting around to fill out applications, to be interviewed, to take drug tests. I have mentioned, too, the general reluctance to exchange the devil you know for one that you don't know even when the latter is tempting you with a better wage benefit package. At each new job, you have to start all over, clueless and friendless.

Matthew Wagar's thoughts on getting rid of paperback.

I couldn't believe it, amazingly, all of my high school teachers want me to bring in a textbook for every class. Why didn't they just let me leave it at home, for my locker is literally on the other side of the school? I think the reason is that chiropractors are in "cahoots" with teachers, and the more books we're given, the more constrained my back gets. School boards across the nation rely on distributing millions of  textbooks that are the weight of bricks, and many times are lost or have new editions that are in need of being bought. Schools are already trying to implement new computers and Smart-boards, or even handing out laptops to everyone. Students who do have these laptops, such as AITE, still have book-filled backpacks, leaving even the technology schools with broken backs. If we upgrade to having eBooks/tablets, not only are we saving space, but we are also saving trees, among many more applications for students, such as paperless note taking,  and easy access to researching on the internet. From switching to eBooks/tablets, too, it opens up a new medium of reading and studying that could bring upon new ways of teaching a class. With eBooks/tablets, it's saving money, and millions of spines.  


(To elaborate more on mediums: many classes of mine want poster making, drawings, and presentations. Although powerpoint, prezi, and google docs make it easier than it was ten to twenty years ago, to be able to put together a presentation with a tablet is a lot quicker, and can be done in class without a trip to the maclab/computerlab or having to supply posterboard. Also to get back to my main problem with textbooks: you aren't able to annotate or underline without sticky notes, and so they make up for it with busy work questions. Textbooks are also just as insanely expensive as Tablets, and require so much more responsibility for students to carry around all five of them everyday. My thinking is, is that through incorporating new, organized forms of technology in schools, it opens up more creative possibilities for learning. Like how in CGS we have ipods to test our speaking, instead of individually being interviewed by the teacher. All in all, I really hate textbooks, and think they are a waste of space, and that teachers shouldn't rely on them to teach a class. Unless of course if it's an AP class, because then it has all the information you need for the test... though there should be an eBook form of the book.)