I simply do not have time for this, but when someone is baiting me — well I’m a softy.
Mark Montgomery, who runs a blog called Text Book Evaluator, commented on an exchange that Terry Freedman and I started over at the Tech Learning Blog, and then carried into our own blogs last week. As a refresher, I said that textbooks are bad, and Terry said that textbooks are good. OK, gross over generatization, because we ended out agreeing with each other, as we usually do. Do read our original exchange, The Rise and Fall of the Hit — and the Textbook Industry, at T&L, and Terry’s response blog, Reports of the death of the textbook have been exaggerated.
It is important to note that the sub-title of Mark’s blog is “Independent Evaluations of Instructional Materials from EdVantage Consulting.” This is a fantastic service, and I wonder why I haven’t heard of anyone doing this before. I wasn’t that involved in textbook adoption when I was at the state department of ed, but I know that there were committees of educators who went through the books. I can certainly see a place, though, for people who have made themselves experts in the field as an essential part of the formula.
Anyway, its important to have that background before reading Mark’s comment and my response. He’s pretty seated in the industry and I’m way outside the box. 😉 Mark says,
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 (â€our book aligns to every, cotton-picking standard in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico!â€).
But the lack of independent checks cannot be countered simply by Wiki-ization of textbooks. We still will lack voices of authority–andthe 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.
2 Cents Worth » Textbook Exchange
Mark, I also agree with Terry, and especially his referral to authority. However, as you say, “..the (instructional materials) market will just be more confused and chaotic.” It is an interesting and accurate description, “confused and chaotic.” The fact is that the information landscape that we graduate our children into is confused and chaotic, and this is exactly why teachers and learners must become more reliant on un-authenticated sources of information, to learn to make themselves their own gatekeepers. It is a basic literacy skill today.
Authority is the key, and in a published print information environment, authority comes from the top. But in an increasingly digital, networked, and overwhelming information environment, authority is much closer to home. Authority has become the information consumer’s responsibility.
It’s like everything else. It’s never an either/or. We certainly do need go well evaluated textbooks. Teachers also need to be creating more of their own information products, if for no other reason than to practice their own information literacy skills. And our students certainly need to be constructing their own knowledge through the learning literacies involved in
Finding and selecting the sources that help you learn
What you need to know
To do
What you need to do.
The question is not, do I use textbooks or do I chuck them for the Internet. The much more interesting question is what will the textbook evolve into as the conditions of the information landscape change so dramatically? And, will the textbook industry have the vision and courage to drive this evolution/revolution or will it come, like so much else, out of the open source community?
This really interests me!
Image Citation
Ningen, Shinzo. “Textbooks.” Shinzo Ningen’s Photostream. 16 Nov 2005. 9 Oct 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/mbeattie/63836881/>.
technorati tags:warlick, education, textbooks, technology, flatclass
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I gave up textbooks when I started writing tech grants for my class. I wrote about 50,000 to 100,000 dollars a year for 6 years before I became Tech Specialist for my small school.
I was bringing in revenue, my students test scores were up, and my administration was smart enough to leave me alone.
It just happened, dropping textbooks, I really didn’t conscously made a decision to do it, just that the resources that the internet offered was more exciting and relevant.
The thing is the dropping of the text book habit aslo invited a lot more ownership,and participation in knowledge acquisition in my class. The internet democratized learning, sort of myself and the kids now had a voice, and a choice. when you get down to it, it was really revolutionary, We were no longer being fed passively from the textabook troughs, we were hunting aggressively and with purpose on the internet for knowledge.
Hi, Dave. I’m enjoying this conversation.
I agree that the textbook industry will have to evolve in some way. But I’m certainly not counting those behemoths out. The major publishers not going to quietly resign themselves to oblivion induced by the open source community.
The open source community is interesting to me because it represents the radical democratization of truth. It is very postmodern, in that it allows us all to construct “our own” truths.
But as someone who spent a big chunk of his life studying philosophy, authority is lurking out there somewhere. As you say, one of our basic duties in teaching literacy is to help students (and each other) find sources of authority, to navigate this confused and chaotic informational landscape.
For there are dangers. While everyone is seeking Truth, someone with ulterior motives can easily manipulate the seekers by declaring themselves holders of the truth. And some–even many–may believe.
Even in the information age, people in this country gravitate to huckster preachers because they are offered truth and salvation and a community to call their own (even as the faithful empty their pockets for the hucksters). Demagogues arise from democracy just as easily as they do from praetorian military juntas (witness Hugo Chavez–not to mention Hitler). Humans want and need some sort of order, and sometimes we will put up with evil just so as not to deal with chaos and insecurity.
I’m excited about the opportunities technology provides. And democratization of information is a good thing. But there can be too much of a good thing, because authority will always have to come from someplace. And not everyone will have the same tools to make sense of the chaos and confusion, and some people will not have the democratic instincts you and I may have.
I’m getting all philosophical and very far from my original point about the textbook industry. And I should add that I’m glad you take it as one of your personal crusades to educate people about how to navigate the chaos and confusion. I share that crusade, and my little corner of the world is to try to set up a alternate authority about the quality of textbooks and other instructional materials so that as the information age continues to generate new stuff, we will have at least one way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
In the K-12 environment, I think perhaps the content standards will save us. While we now have standards in 50 states (another sort of chaos and confusion), there is movement to consolidate them into a single set of standards. While we’ll always continue to argue about the standards, at least we’re all moving toward some basic level of agreement about what 2nd graders ought to know and be able to do in mathematics. As open source content develops, it will have to take these standards into account if it is to be used. I think this evolution is coming, slowly, but it won’t happen as fast as in a lot of other industries because everyone in education is too invested in the “old way of doing business.”
That is why Wikipedia is so interesting. It started out as chaos, but as it has developed, it has had to construct its own authoritative structures and rules so as to ensure that out of the many comes the Truth, not just many truths. Perhaps that will happen in the textbook and instructional materials industry, eventually.
Great conversation. Thanks.
Thanks for keeping me thinking…
I empathize with the sentiment ‘ I do not have time for this†because there is so much I should be doing right now however the subject is an interesting one. I read the original exchange between you and Terry and have been thinking about it on and off.
One thing that struck me in this post was the parallel to an article from my local paper which I wrote about in my blog. It was about publishing scholarly scientific research online.*One side felt that it would elicit more peer review and allow more information to be made available and broaden the number of experts who could weigh in on any given research project. The other side argued that the traditional peer review before publication was very important to protect quality.
Textbooks as a source of authoritative information have value. They are an educational tool but so is Web 2.0. As you said it is not either/or. However if the way we teach is changing then by necessity the tools must change. Will the textbook companies respond? I would guess the answer is slowly…..There are really very few textbook companies because they all have common parent companies. I agree with the scientific scholars who are pushing for online publishing. It will encourage peer review and allow for these wonderful tools (textbooks) to be remixed to reflect todays learning enviroment. I hope the open source community will push the envelope because we need that push to jump start this.
* link to article http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_4428547