Just for the Teachers/Professors

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

For the past few years I have laid down the law with regards sources. No Wikipedia. Ever. lol.

Bricks and mortar libraries are becoming a thing of the past too, unfortunately. At my current University the library itself is little more than a study centre for students who want a bit of quiet - with a few monographs and periodicals scattered around to give the illusion of a library. Most of its collection is online now.

I love libraries. My favourite is the Bodleian in Oxford. I ordered a particular book from there once: it took them 6 days to get it to me. Apparently it was in a tunnel 60 miles away, and they had to send some old librarian in a golf buggy down there to grab it from the archives. How could you not love that? :)

James.

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I think the digitization of knowledge has the potential for great benefit for many people.

That having been said, there is *nothing* like a good bricks & mortar library. Not only for the aesthetics of it (the British Library's Manuscript Reading Room is one of my favourite places on Earth) but also because of the potential for serendipitous discovery. If you want to really get to know your subject, go to the stacks, get the book that you were looking for, then look on the shelves around it. In a good library, you will find there any number of books about whose existance you were unaware, but which speak to your subject.

Try doing that with a strictly online catalogue.

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Originally Posted by ndw76

Here in Thailand we avoid this problem by just graduating the students into the next year level. As a foreigner I am not allowed to give them a grade because I would cause trouble by failing students.

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Wow. I would find that a) baffling and b) frustrating!

Is this just due to your being a foreigner, or are grades not a 'thing' in Thai schools in general?

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Originally Posted by Cangooner

Wow. I would find that a) baffling and b) frustrating!

Is this just due to your being a foreigner, or are grades not a 'thing' in Thai schools in general?

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Failing is not a Thai thing. They think it might discorage the student from wanting to learn. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

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Originally Posted by ndw76

Failing is not a Thai thing. They think it might discorage the student from wanting to learn. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

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Ah the classic Losing Face Avoidance tactic. I'm familiar with the concept. But in all candor, I think schools in the states are increasingly headed in that direction. Back when I was in school a teacher wouldn't hesitate to fail you if you weren't doing the work. They made no apologies, took no flak from their bosses, let alone parents. In fact, back when the world was real, parents would actually "motivate" their kids be be a bit more diligent about their studies (happened to me more than once, worked like a champ.) I think anyone who doesn't know how to fail is destined have a very tough time ever succeeding on any kind of real level.

To all of you educators, I being one myself. I thank you for what you do. Day in and day out you are tried by the impatient and the entitled. For this you are my heros. I never thought I would become an educator myself, but the educators in my life really had a hand in who I have become. I have had many great role models in my life, and those individuals prepared me well for my career. I thank them, and thank you again for having the courage, and integrity to keep doing the right thing.

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Originally Posted by 1OldGI

... I think anyone who doesn't know how to fail is destined have a very tough time ever succeeding on any kind of real level.

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I couldn't agree more. Success is built on failure, often multiple failure. Failing is important - it teaches you important lessons about yourself, it teaches you to be persistent and patient. It also, IMO, teaches you how to believe in yourself and your abilities if looked at in the right light. Many of my students don't understand this when I say it to them, but I sincerely hope for their sakes that they learn it one day.

Of course, success does good things for your self esteem too. But what is failure but a data point on your way toward a goal? You've tried something, it didn't work the way you wanted it to. There's a data point. Try something else, get another data point:

Fail -> Learn -> Adapt -> Try again -> .... -> Success.

Achieving goals is a process. I think it's important to realise that failing is just an integral part of that process.

James.

I'll be the contrarian here :)

You know I really love to go to this fancy library on campus where the shelves are made of wrought iron, the rooms are 3 story high (with wrought iron spiral stairways going to the higher levels), plush armchairs scattered around and hardwood elaborately carved ones to hardwood desks in front of arched windows overlooking the lake.... It's a really nice place to 'work', but I must say that it's just an illusion to occasionally go to for relaxation, or to stimulate your creativity.

To be able to do my work I need the almost instant access to resources via internet. I know it's real fun to get an old book or manuscript written by a bigwhig in the field about a century or two ago, or even get to go to the special room for access to rare manuscripts where you put on those white gloves :) But that's really not how research in my field is done these days.
We're simply not anymore in the days of Newton when you sent your work by special carriage to a couple of your colleagues and presented it once every few months in a parliamentary style in front of everybody :)

It's basically the same as trading writing with quill and ink you prepared yourself for a pencil, for a typewriter, for a computer... Efficiency in certain tasks just wins.
Of course, there will always be things that are inherently inefficient, but they seem to be related generally to sparking creativity (from research I've read boredom can be very good for it), but there is huge bulk of work that we still have to do, where we really need any help that modern technology can give us :)

There is no doubt at all that for many purposes online or digitized sources are the way to go. Sometimes the only way to go. In my work we use a digitized database of records for our research and while it has its drawbacks, the size and speed of the collection (I can access over 1.1 million documents from my desk) allow us to complete more cases more quickly than would be possible with hardcopy records.

But if I can be contra-contrarian here... :)

My academic research focused mostly on an era roughly 600-700 years ago, so I'm talking manuscripts rather than printed books here. This has several effects on access to information. First, it is not unlikely for a manuscript to exist in only one copy anywhere in the world, and for that copy not to be digitized. In such cases one has to go to the manuscript. Second, even if a 650-year-old document has been digitized and there is an image available online, it may still be unreadable in its digitized form. Manuscripts can be obscured by dirt, blood, smudges, erasures, or simple wear and tear. And to see what the document contains often requires a trip to the library or archive armed with tools such as loupes and UV lights. Even with those it can be a painstaking process that consumes hours, days, or even weeks just to read what the thing says. It also often requires a new prescription for glasses due to eye strain.

I used to love discovering new information on a manuscript that had at some point been erased (the ink physically scraped off the parchment) and re-used. Sometimes when you look at a MS with a UV light, it is possible to read what had been erased. So you end up with the visible text as well as one or more 'hidden' documents that no one has seen for hundreds of years.

All that to say... for some purposes, digitization is fantastic and has become an essential tool. But for others, one still has to get the thing in hand. Horses for courses, and all that.

That, and I just like discovering things in libraries. :)

Dragging myself back on topic...

I too agree about the importance of failure. Everyone fails. Everyone. And if one doesn't learn to to deal with and learn from that as a child, future failures can be needlessly catastrophic. I think the approach of not allowing kids to fail at whatever they are engaged in (whether it is school, sports, checkers... whatever) is a long-term recipe for both practical and psychological disaster.

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Originally Posted by Cangooner

I used to love discovering new information on a manuscript that had at some point been erased (the ink physically scraped off the parchment) and re-used. Sometimes when you look at a MS with a UV light, it is possible to read what had been erased. So you end up with the visible text as well as one or more 'hidden' documents that no one has seen for hundreds of years.

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A bit off topic, but I love learning new words. Just last night I learned Palimpsest while reading Sherlock Holmes.

Library's - very major specific. I just finished my Masters in business; I went to the library often. Actually some accused me of living there, but not once did I check out a book. One class had some readings on reserve, but you don't need a library for that.

That said, the quiet study area's upstairs became a sanctuary for me. And when I had to do group work, the downstairs with its white boards were great!

As for entitlement issues - no one in the MBA was afflicted. It's a small program so I knew just about everyone in it. Again the whole entitlement thing might be major specific as well as undergrad business made no bones about the fact that there were weed-out courses. Econ, calculus, financial accounting - all weed-out classes. If you wanted to be in b-school, you had to work your way in.

That's my anecdotal insight. But before I close, I will tell you that a friend of mine in a different program told me once about how he was taking an "incomplete" for one of his classes - I had never heard of that before and asked him what it was. He got rather annoyed with me as though I should know. When I talked to the b-school adviser about them, she said that the b-school only provided incompletes if the student was worthy, and the reason for it had to be extraordinary.