Well, this is the kind of thing that happens when schools start to list on the stock exchange (I am exaggerating, but it wouldn't surprise me to see this one day). Actually, a private school over here made a 30 million dollar profit last financial year, so by rights all their students should be getting CERN LHCs, not tablets.

What bothers me as a tertiary educator is the complete lack of anything resembling note-taking skills. Yes, understanding and being able to use technology is important - it always has been and always will be - but just a basic ability to take notes seems to elude 90% of the students I see. And since I lecture maths and stats, there aint no way they can take my notes down on a computer during lectures.

And so what tends to happen is that students demand the complete notes be typed up and distributed to them. And because Universities are commercial enterprises, what the students want the students get. And, to compensate for the fact that the academic has had to spend 100s of hours typing up lecture notes into a usable form fit for student consumption rather than spending that time on research and producing papers in journals, we get a publisher and turn those notes into a textbook (you at least get some credit for a book - not as much as say an article in that paragon of scholastic rigour, Nature, but still some). And, as the poster above alluded to, no one reads text books anymore unless they are an iWhatever app, and even then they probably just download it and never open it. And in the end all that is accomplished is that we have re-enforced the belief in the younger generation that everything that is known, has been known, and ever will be known, can be found by googling the internet.

But I digress. What I meant to say was that it is half way through semester, and right now I hate all students!

James.