A few days ago I published a blog entry entitled The Rise and Fall of the Hit — and the Textbook Industry. It was originally posted in the Technology & Learning Magazine blog on Monday. London education consultant, Terry Freedman and I engaged in a short discussion that I rather enjoyed, and am compiling here, as much for my record as for yours.
In my post, I concluded…
…So! I got to thinking. Could this happen to the textbook industry?
- What if teachers and pre-service education students started writing little chunks of content, worthy of their textbooks.
- What if a file-sharing network emerged where teachers could search,access, and download snippets of content from each other — world-wide?
- What if teachers started assembling this shared content into theirMoodle sites, or someone writes an open source application specificallydesigned to become the next-gen digital textbook?
- What if we could stop buying text books, and use the money toprovide every teacher and learner with access to the world of digitalnetworked content.
Our homework assignments would change just a bit…
from…
Ya’ll read the chapter and answer the questions at the end!
to…
Ya’ll read the chapter and then validate it by Friday!
The Rise and Fall of the … Textbook Industry
Friend, and fellow Tech Learning Blogarati, Terry Freedman, posted a counter-point entry the next day, Reports of the death of the textbook have been exaggerated, in which he concluded…
What pundits like Dave Warlick and others seem to relish is thesituation in which I. together with my students, can develop our owntextbook. The only thing then standing between me and the failure of mystudents would be the high-stakes testing regime that we all love tohate.
Perhaps we could replace objective examinations with some sort oftouchy-feely alternative. Using our own textbooks to prepare for ourown collaboratively-produced tests, all our students would pass. Itwould, of course, be completely self-referential, and thereforemeaningless, and potential employers and institutions of highereducation will need to do what more and more of them in the UK aredoing already: set their own entrance examinations which students haveto take regardless of their graduation grades.
Please do read Terry’s entire post. It is a compelling and important read.
Of course, I posted a reply, poking fun, but mostly trying to roll the ball back toward center.
Re: Reports of the Death of Textbooks…
Posted on 10/03/2006 09:39 AM EDTTerry,
A very good post, here. Mind-in-the-clouds,wild-eyed idealists like me would make a real mess of things, if itweren’t down-to-earth, feet on solid ground spokespeople like you. Weall need a curmudgeon
I’mjust kidding about the curmudgeon thing, because you are absolutelyright. Teaching and learning that is seated in reality needs roots anda sense of authority. But does that authority come from the standards,from the textbook, from the teacher’s professionalism, or from thestudent’s skill in finding the truth themselves. I would maintain thatit’s a combination of all of these and more.
That textbooks willbecome digital, there is no doubt. That teachers produce their ownteaching materials has been happening for years. That students mustlearn to tell the difference between what is true and valuable, andwhat is not, is an imperative. The result will be a reinvention of thetextbook. I don’t know if we’ll continue to call it a textbook, what itwill look like, or how it will behave. I would hope that the textbookindustry wakes up and adapts quickly, because I believe that we needthem. But change will happen, with or without.
The bottom lineis that lifelong learners need to be able to create and cultivate theirown learning experiences, and this is something that needs to be a partof what and how our children learn.
Again, thanks for the counter-point. I do, sincerely, appreciate it.
And Terry wrote…
Death of the textbook
Posted on 10/03/2006 02:12 PM EDTROFL. Thanks, David. It’s ok to call me a curmudgeon: my wife isconvinced I’m lining myself up for some sort of Grumpy Old Man of theYear Award. I was, of course, partly being deliberately provocative, toget a debate going <g>
Regardingauthority: I was thinking about that too. I agree with your analysis.Also, I think the authority comes from all the other stuff we bring tothe party, eg involvement in various groups and activities, personalhistory and so on.
Life is a tug-of-war, and it’s fun, if we tug with a smile!
technorati tags:warlick, terryfreedman, textbooks, technology, education
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Thank you both for continuing this discussion and sharing with all of us.
I eagerly await the death of the textbook as we currently know it in print form because of it’s inaccessibility to the students with whom I work. Students who are print disabled, whether due to physical disabilities, visual impairments or reading disabilities, are denied that part of the curriculum.
Digital materials are, by definition, accessible and flexible. I can’t wait until all textbook publishers, curriculum directors and those who are in positions of power realize it.
(And sometimes, when I’m fighting for my students who don’t have access to the curriculum, it’s hard “to tug with a smile.” Too many education professionals just don’t get it!)
Thanks for re-creating the comments here, David. I actually agree with both you and Karen, but I just think we need to be careful about the authority issue. In fact, it goes even deeper than that: if we want to, we now have the means to very easily challenge the conventional wisdom in any field, a prospect which is at the same time both exhilararing and terrifying.
I enjoyed the conversation. I’m very proud of a digital textbook that I’ve been compiling on a wiki. Every day on my own blog I link to a current event and then I provide lesson ideas. I also copy the lesson ideas into a wiki and after some time has elapsed I put each entry into a chapter. Take a look at it: http://current-events-education.wikispaces.com/ I think that this site provides an example of authority coming from somewhere other than the textbook. I only wish that more people would collaborate in its development.
Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html
I very much agree with Terry Freedman. I often use the word “quality” when speaking about textbooks in the K-12 world. I like his use of the word “authority.” At the moment, what gives the Big Four publishers “authority” is nothing other than their brand names and their market share. There is very little quality control. Put another way, there is no independent check (or checks) on this authority. No one is putting their feet to the fire to independently verify their claims (“our book aligns to every, cotton-picking standard in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico!”).
But the lack of independent checks cannot be countered simply by Wiki-ization of textbooks. We still will lack voices of authority–and the market will just be more confused and chaotic. The whole reason brand-names develop is because of perceptions of quality. The problem today is not the existence of brand-names, but the complete lack of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Laboratory to verify the claims of the producers.
I love capitalism!
Thanks for a provocative conversation.