The Textbook of the Future

[Sandy Hirtz]

Dr Tony Bates thinks that educational ‘books’ in the future will be nothing like the Gutenberg model. He says

    * Imagine a personal learning environment with the instructor and learners selecting multimedia resources, and with internal software tools that allows different ways to combine and analyse content.
    * Imagine for instance a physiology text book with basic anatomy linked to videos explaining organ or other ‘area’ functions, the consequence of drug or other ‘invasions’ of the body or organ function, etc.
    * Or an economics text, with areas for social discussion in the light of current events, linked to an archived history of applications or failures of an economic theory in the past, that can be added to or removed through interaction with the readers.
    * Or a book on the management of e-learning, that allows readers to upload their own scenarios for discussion and content, with the authors responding

What do you think the textbook of the future will look like?

In August 2009, this slide was posted on Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant.  Definitely provocative!

[Lloyd Rodgers]

Having just returned from leading a workshop with Western educators on engaging adult learners in South Asia, I am reminded that content delivery methods need to be culturally contextualized just as much as the content itself.  How about a textbook whose content delivery varies according to the cultural context?  Someone asked me this week about books I would recommend for a workshop in Central America, but the person could not say if the participants were oral learners.  Maybe he needs books, but certainly he needs a narrative delivery.  An educator that spends money on a wall map for a classroom that has no walls, might be a visionary, might be good with hammer and nails, or might just be culturally uninformed. 

[Michele Gutierrez]

I am wrestling with this idea myself. I have no firm answers, but a few inspiring thoughts. Working at a school that is looking for more digital content before going 1:1 (in search of lighter backpacks), I am excited by all of the possibilities that are out there for creating our own collections of digital resources for a more relevant experience. Dan Meyer's TEDxNYED talk about creating engaging math curriculum is a great example of someone already making this happen in the classroom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlvKWEvKSi8. I also find Andrew Marcineck's blog post at iTEach inspiring. He has empowered his students to find their own resources and create shared collections of relevant knowledge http://iteach20.blogspot.com/2011/04/own-it.html#disqus_thread.

[Rob Griffith]

Technology allows students to find any facts they want. They can research to a depth that we never could twenty years ago. Are we setting them up to miss the "big picture" ? I have an ongoing argument/discussion with a colleague about the use of technology in our school. I believe that students still need to learn a common body of concepts and facts that can best be learned through traditional methods (wall maps etc..). This common body of knowledge is the "jumping off point: for the technology enhanced deeper learning. I will keep my maps...and technology.

[Lloyd Rodgers]

I agree.  The challenge is that the definition of "traditional methods" shifts as you cross worldview boundaries.  Thirty years ago, my father told me that an "educated person" is someone who "knows where to go to get the information he or she needs."  Of course, he was thinking of that prized, 20-kilo atlas supporting a stack of equally thick tomes.  As you point out, the more fundamental question is "What information do I need?"  There is a proper time and place to teach someone how to navigate an atlas or a smart phone.  Knowing what to do with the information they will encounter has always been the educator's fundamental task.

Rob Griffith said:

Technology allows students to find any facts they want. They can research to a depth that we never could twenty years ago. Are we setting them up to miss the "big picture" ? I have an ongoing argument/discussion with a colleague about the use of technology in our school. I believe that students still need to learn a common body of concepts and facts that can best be learned through traditional methods (wall maps etc..). This common body of knowledge is the "jumping off point: for the technology enhanced deeper learning. I will keep my maps...and technology.

[Sharon Betts]

This can be done today and is by individual educators around the world. What we need is a framework of teaching that allows for the development of the materials. This needs to be collaborative involving students as well. Preparation for teachers in a new paradigm is also part of the mix.