Enhancing Teaching with Technology: Are We There Yet?

Imagine a scene in which groups of tech-savvy students wander among dusty library stacks seeking the books and articles from the recommended hard-copy lists given to them by their professors. With iPods and smart phones intact, they do one-handed text messaging and then plunk down their wireless laptops and check their e-mail before earnestly hunting down a book's call numbers. Eventually, they go searching for those texts, finally reach the right floor, but are frustrated when the text is not there or is not what they thought it would be. They go back to their laptops, and using Boolean operators, online databases, and interactive Web sites, all found via Google, they locate what they need: a novella by George Eliot from Project Gutenberg, literary criticism on Emily Dickinson's poems from the Dickinson Electronic Archives, and research on Ansel Adams from the Smithsonian's online service Ask Joan of Art. Then they instant message their classmates to ask for clarification about the assignment, and dialogue ensues about their respective research efforts along with exchanges of Web addresses for several popular political blogs. Once they have found the sources they need for their projects, they cite those works using the bibliographic software NoodleBib.