I remember when I was a classroom teacher (quite a long time ago, I haven’t taught in the K-12 setting since 1998), having new textbooks and being excited that they came with some electronic resources. I remember having a difficult time organizing other resources that I liked to use in my classroom. I started with jotting notes to myself in the margins of the teachers’ manual, but then I developed an extensive file of lesson plans (it takes years to really put that together) with all the resources and where to find them included. There were books, videos and filmstrips in our school library, there were things on instructional television that I could have our media specialist record for me, and then there were some very good 16MM films that I could order by mail from the Media Centers. It was always difficult to time the arrival of the films because you had to order at least two weeks ahead of time and then you could keep them only for a couple of days. Sometimes I would have to adjust my lessons and it would throw the timing for these resources off and I would have to send them back without using them. The public library was also a good source for materials, but it was a 30 minute drive there after school to get the materials and then another trip to return them. All of this coordination of resources was a daunting task... And even with great lesson plans, each year I need to adjust my lessons based on how my students were doing, so it was always changing. And that was long before all the great internet resources and things like TeacherTube!
There were times when the textbook simply did not match my “Course of Study,” which is what we went by back then because there were no Academic Content Standards yet.
When I first learned about wikis, my first thought was “Wow - this is the exactly what I needed all those years ago for organizing my resources!” And after using them for a few years now, I am starting to think that perhaps a wiki would make a fabulous replacement for the textbook. I think you could use the the outline provided by the Academic Content Standards and put together the best possible resources for teaching them. You would have so much more than “text on the page” for differentiating instruction. You could have sections for student contributions and your classroom would become more dynamic with projects. A classroom wiki combined with a good collection of reference books in the back of the room seems to me like it would be a perfect setup.
I realize that this would take time, so maybe a teacher would just begin using the wiki in conjunction with their textbook as supplemental material. I really think that after a couple of years, it would be a much better resource than the textbook.
I think students might agree....
What do you think? I found this article interesting.
3 comments:
I would love to see an open textbook. We have teachers that could provide the content. We just need someone to take on the project and publicize it. The textbook companies are turning huge profits for selling outdated material.
I believe it is a matter of teachers finding the time to build this content and get it approved. In the interim what I would personally like to see is something like the Kindle of Sony Reader being implemented. If textbook publishers were savvy they would just stop selling printed textbooks and go to ebooks. They could sell textbooks for a much more reasonable price (they will always be somewhat expensive due to the niche market for each book). Ebooks would be much easier to keep updated since no printing costs are involved.
From my reading about ereaders, Independents and publishers actually prefer the Sony reader as it is a more open platform, and not closed to only the Amazon bookstore as in the case of the Kindle. If Sony would add some sort of wireless network capability and a decent web browser (a must to access classroom materials on something like a wiki), they might have something.
In my case I would prefer a dedicated ereader over something like the iTouch because of screen size.
I know exactly what you mean! Coming from the 70s, I see a wealth of possibilites for these tools and how they can impact our lessons.
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