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Ever since I started exploring online journalism in the late '70s, an odd strawman has reared its head. It's the one that suggests that newspapers and other traditional media have to make a choice between paper and screen.

But what if your screen was your paper? What if the very best experience you could have with your print content was under glass? What if silicon were the new cellulose?

That's where we are now with the iPad.

Can books built for iPads be used for rich media journalism?

That's the question my online journalism students in the MAJ program at the University of Western Ontario are tackling.

And, we're working with rabble.ca and thetyee.ca to get a made-in-Canada answer.

Starting a couple of weeks ago, two student teams in the class partnered with rabble and The Tyee to take a sizeable chunk of their content and convert it into a book on the iPad using Apple's new iBooks Author software.

It's natural, given over 50 years of experience, to imagine our computers as devices that have screens and some sort of keyboard input, real or virtual.

Those two design elements constrain the device's form factor since the screens need to be big enough for us to see and the keyboards must make room for our fingers or thumbs.

But a number of technological hurdles are being overcome that will, in the coming year, dramatically alter the shape of our computing and communication devices. We are about to enter the world of wearable computing. Before the end of 2012 many of will be sporting bracelets, watches, fobs and other fashion doodads that will send us messages or convey data to our phones, computers and the Internet. These devices already exist.