I remember when I was in elementary school, when we were assigned a research project or a paper, everyone would rush to the library and check out materials and periodicals. I remember when we went to the library as a class and learned how to use microfiche and the card catalog. I would bet that if you asked an elementary school student today what a periodical is, they would have a difficult time answering that question. I use a mac at work and I am continuously amazed at how high tech they are. It makes my PC at home look like an old apple computer from 1985. With technology advancing at the rate that it is, I still think that kids should be taught certain things the “old school” way, the way I learned things when I was growing up. It just seems like such a shame to me that kids will google World War I and be inundated with information, as opposed to riding their bike to the neighborhood library to check out a book to read- and possibly come across a couple others that they might be interested in. Oh well. Maybe I’m just stuck in my ways.
These are legitimate concerns, ones Postman would probably raise. We need to be wary of what we lose when we embrace a new technology…as you point out, there is certainly benefit in such “old school” practices as traditional library-based research. We should not, to use a cliche, “throw the baby out with the bathwater” when we consider various digital and online options in school.