The computer is a common resource. Teachers and students regularly use technology for educational purposes. This week’s article looks at the role of textbooks in schools and how textbooks are changing. Go to the link below and read the article. Write a reflective comment that shows you have read the article, expresses your views, and addresses my questions.
How do you think that the use of textbooks will change in the future? How successful do you think the California initiative will be? What problems do you see that might keep it from being successful? One school superintendent in the article predicts that “In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks.” What is your prediction? How should schools address the digital divide issue that is mentioned in the article?
Textbook Article
11 comments:
I do agree that textbooks will be online and electronic in the future. Though it might take some time for the California initiative to be in full use, I think that it will be especially useful for the state especially under their financial difficulties. However, to the underprivileged that do not have access to the Internet or computers easily, it might present a problem and hinder their learning. As much as it would be useful to have students accessing textbooks and learning resources solely from the web, five years, in my opinion, isn’t enough time for this to be in full throttle. A prediction of ten to fifteen years would seem more accurate for “the majority of students”. If schools are willing to transform into digital centers, they (as should the state) be prepared to pay for those who do not have the advantages of others.
Attiya S.
Well I think that the use of textbooks in the future will be near extinct based on information from the article. I think that California will be very successful in starting the no textbook schools. The only problems I see in replacing textbooks for computers are price, mostly for poorer schools and community’s. I think that may be so in North America and most of Europe but in other areas of the world it will take several more years. I think that schools can address the digital divide by getting more funding from the government and more donations from the community to afford computers for all there students.
Tristan
Personally I agree with idea that it is time for a change. A change in the form of education that has been provided with burdensome and "antiquated" textbooks will become necessary in the near future. Of course there will be a limit in supplying electronic textbooks but there will always be a gap between the rich and the poor, making it near impossible to give fare treatment to each and every person. The only thing we can be sure of is that, although everyone will not be given the same time, eventually the gap will become smaller and smaller due to the development of living conditions through the means of technology.
The article is pretty self explanatory and agreeable. Textbooks are dying out, it's a fact. More teachers are turning to online resources to supplement their teaching or to just eliminate annoying textbooks in general. Now, a matter of how long it will take for all textbooks to be apart of history is still sketchy. It won't happen overnight, that's for sure, but I doubt that it would take 10 or 20 years for everything to be pretty much paperless. The California initiative can be successful, as long as it isn't pushed- it's going to take time for it to happen, but it's a good direction to be headed in.
On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. First, like the author mentions, not everyone has access to a computer. Low income neighborhoods and families wouldn't be able to access their lectures, texts and homework. Second, some students work better by NOT using a computer- by simply writing or reading it by hand.
I predict that the government will run into a number of problems in trying to nationally establish this initiative. The government can't ignore the divide, nor can they provide enough funds to give every student in the U.S. a computer; yet they still have this plan to go completely electronically. I think there's a major problem which is mainly why I don't agree with the 5 year goal, realistically it's going to be more like 10 or 20 years... and with this economy, maybe longer.
(sorry if this is long... I had a lot to say)
While this revolution will most likely occur, I don't think its for the best. Digital textbooks would take away from some of the struggle of school life - lugging them around, flipping through them in search of terms, etc. This will make things too easy for future student. They won't have to work as hard to learn, and what's the point of learning if you don't really have to work for it? Encouraging students to read their texts "whenever they want" defeats the purpose of school as well. It would enervate the structure of school schedules and would give students too much freedom. The students of the 2000s have already slacked enough and suffered from having too much space and freedom (we have all pushed things off because we knew we could). Giving them this much freedom and removing school structure is just going to encourage them to do even more of this procrastinating and use time more poorly.
If this goes through and becomes wide spread, I think the future of education will be full of slacking, unfocused students who have little pushing them to work and finish assignments.
I think this initiative could be successful in the sense that it will do what it is meant to do: turn education into something digital. We have the resources, technology is popular, we have a Democratic president, so everything is in place for it to become a nationwide thing and even spread to the rest of the country, but I think it will ultimately hurt the country's education.
The major problem that could stop the California initiative from really formulating would be the textbook manufacturers. The businesses of the United States have always had a say in how things occur - on a social level, governmental level, whatever. So, it's very unlikely that they will simply sit back and let education go completely digital. They could charge for digital textbooks, but it seems that they would lose more than they would gain from this "revolution", and no one likes change when what they have currently is working just fine.
I predict that this revolution will not occur for another 7-9 years. There may be more digital resources for education popping up, much more frequently, but I doubt that education will go COMPLETELY digital in 5 years. The transition textbook manufacturers and education material/tool providers would have to go through would be quite large, and they would no doubt put up a fight and prolong this transition from occurring.
To address the digital divide issue, schools should allow further access to campuses after hours - open up libraries, tech labs, etc... to students later into the night (or even on weekends), so that those without computers at home can still do whatever they need to on a computer at school. They could also free up more time during the day - give longer free periods, for example - so that the less fortunate students could do their digital work/reading during school, in case they are unable to afterward. Additionally, communities could open up free tech centers or other computer-based, public venues to give these students an opportunity to do digital work/reading at another location.
In my opinion, textbooks have already reached their climax, and at this point they are starting to decline in terms of use. School will not feel the same as it used too without the use of textbooks. The classic flipping of pages, where are we kind of questions will be replaced by questions such as “how do you get there?” or “I clicked on that but its broken.” I think the California initiative will be successful with the students that find computers a new source of knowledge but there are many problems that rise with the use of digital textbooks such as “I forgot to charge it, or its broken.” I think that in the counties that are wealthier than the others will start the change much earlier than the ones that don’t have too many resources. With the divide issue, I think that the nation should have some sort of program to test this idea out but actually giving each student in the United States a laptop is out of the picture, especially with this economy.
Now the modern world is changing to use technology. In nowdays, everyone knows how to use computer and other technologies. I do agree that textbooks will be online and electronic in the future. I don't think it will be happening very fast. There will be lots of problem also, if the education changes to technoloy. People who are not very rich, it will be hard for them to get education with technology. Maybe lots of people wouldn't agree for that reason. I think it will take some times to make technology devices, because there will be problems of internet. Some countries have really fast internet, but some countries have really slow internet and they disconnects alot. If technology is changing to technology, some countries such as USA and European countries will have it first because they have the good technology skills. I think it will take time, and it is better to rely on your normal text books now, eventhough you will find stuffs more faster than normal textbooks.
The chances of a major change of textbooks in the near future are 80:20, but it will change the average amount on how many people will use textbooks in the near future.
I am pretty sure the CA initiative will e successful because those textbooks could be over-sized kindles.
In a time period that long, I think it is possible. By then Windows XP will be out of date (by 99% of the world) & almost everything is more than up-to-date.
Because of the digital divide, soon the CA initiative will have lower chances of being successful, because as it is written, most of the students don't have access to PCs, kindles, printers & smartphones, & since school has started, the parents will have a very difficult choice between using their money for costly apparel, or paying the school bills, BUT if there were to be an unpredictable discount, it would be a bit easier for the parents to buy their kids this pricy stuff.
I think that the change in future will effect all of us who are use to using textbooks. We know a lot from them. Online, the information we see, sometimes aren't very accurate. I personally think that California will take some time to use it. Things that could prevent from being useful is that if we grow up and have kids, and they have the online, we wont know what's on the online, we would only know our knowledge from the textbooks we used as we were growing up! My prediction is that we still will have textbooks, because most us have learned from the textbook and changing would be hard, after what we already know!
I think that the school should address it as a digital book. Tell people about it and how it works and what we do on it.
Post a Comment