Paper-Based Computing: Not What You Think

This article by Charles Hannon in EDUCAUSE Quarterly is subtitled, "Another new technology demands we work together to plan the future—or be caught unprepared when the inevitable issues arise."

We agree with that sentiment: Faculty have a great deal of control over their lectures, lecture notes, and slides. A coming wave of recording devices and other classroom technologies—this time wielded by the students—will test this control and force serious conversations about how we can best help students learn, what it means to own an idea, and what we mean when we talk about developing a community of learners on campus.

The harbinger of this wave is the Livescribe Pulse smart pen, created by an MIT engineer and initially aimed directly at the college student market. The smart pen points a tiny camera at specially marked paper,1 captures what is written, and converts the writing to PDF files and plain text in what is being called paper-based computing. The pen comes with microphones that capture audio and software that synchronizes it with the written notes. A student can replay an entire lecture at a later time, either by interacting with the written notes or through a computer. The pen’s software also makes it easy to share recorded class sessions with other students at the Livescribe website or through Facebook.

How different is the functionality of the smart pen from existing technologies? It certainly is not the first recording device to turn up in the classroom—students have been asking permission to use recorders for years. The concept of electronic notes that can be shared among peers also is not new; students have been bringing their laptops to class for over a decade, and few faculty proscribe the sharing of notes. At many colleges, the floodgates appear to be already open, with faculty making their course materials available electronically, from posting simplified notes to a course website to streaming video and slides of every moment of the class meeting.

Because it is so easy to create, reproduce, and distribute digital content, new technologies such as the smart pen will bring to the foreground issues that have always existed just under the surface of our everyday practice. It is one thing for faculty to provide students a copy of their PowerPoint slides or allow them to share notes or record a lecture. It is altogether different for students to create word-for-word digital text and audio transcriptions of a semester-long course. It can be heartening to see a small group of students pooling their notes and meeting to discuss difficult concepts, but imagine a top student posting a highly accurate digital transcript of a semester’s worth of intellectual work to a Facebook page. The realities of digital content, combined with the popularity of social networking sites, make this new environment one that we need to shape with clearly thought-out and articulated policies.