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Leslie Lieman

Apple and the Digital Textbook Counter-Revolution - 3 views

hackeducation.com/...he-textbook-counter-revolution

iPad iPads textbooks iBooks education technology

shared by Leslie Lieman on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Leslie Lieman on 28 Jan 12
     
    I am posting two articles: 1) Apple's recent announcement about getting into digital textbooks (article/link below) and 2) the criticism (this link) by Hack Education blogger Audrey Watters. Education needs to rethink the need for textbooks altogether. Digitizing them is not the answer. She states, "You can disassemble, reassemble, unbundle, disrupt, destroy the textbook. It is truly an irrelevant format."
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Emily Lovell on 30 Jan 12
     
    I thought it was interesting to read Watters's criticism of Apple's textbook plans, although I also thought it felt pretty one-sided. I do have reservations about how Apple is going about this (expecting everyone to own an iPad, requiring textbook authors to surrender rights, etc.) - but I don't think that the overall idea is so unbearable. Digitized textbooks offer many affordances compared to what we're stuck with currently (textbooks that are outdated, heavy, expensive, and limited by static content). Of course, theoretically we could do without textbooks, as Watters suggests in her criticism... but I'm not yet convinced of this in a practical, realistic sense. I suspect that the resources required to realize textbook-free classrooms are beyond what most schools and teachers have access to. (I also realize that iPads are not cheap! But if digitized textbooks were to become popular across a range of platforms, perhaps they would be more accessible to a broader demographic... and it's not as if physical textbooks are cheap either.)
  • Leslie Lieman on 30 Jan 12
     
    Hi Emily - thanks for your thoughts! Bloggers (especially those who use the name Hack in their title) are going to be provocative (one-sided) in their writing... but it helps raise questions about standard practices. I too agree that eTextbooks or iBooks are going to be tremendously more engaging and up-to-date than the ones that weigh down kids bookbags. But now take a look at the other article I posted: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/flow-digital-textbooks that suggests how publishers are not open to new and niche ideas that might be incredibly beneficial to education. The publishing market has a hold on education. Is it possible that the textbooks will not be available across a range of platforms, but only on a few that the publishers agree to work with? Maybe it is time we push for a more open source model... that could also work towards digitizing textbooks... or would innovate other ways for students to access "textbook"" knowledge.
  • Emily Lovell on 30 Jan 12
     
    Thanks for the nudge to read the other article that you posted as well! It was a nice counterpoint to Watters and the FLOW platform seems like a promising stab at digital textbooks from an open-source standpoint.
Chris McEnroe

Hyping classroom technology helps tech firms, not students - latimes.com - 1 views

www.latimes.com/...ltzik-20120205,0,639053.column

shared by Chris McEnroe on 05 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • "The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark, director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the evidence has been around for more than 50 years."
  • "does not automatically inspire teachers to rethink their teaching or students to adopt new modes of learning."
  • The app is free, and plainly can help users create visually striking textbooks. But buried in the user license is a rule that if you sell a product created with iBooks Author, you can sell it only through Apple's iBookstore, and Apple will keep 30% of the purchase price. (Also, your full-featured iBook will be readable only on an Apple device such as an iPad.)
  • Chris McEnroe on 05 Feb 12
     
    This article is a bit snarky but it raises some worthwhile cautions around the buzz of tech in education, particularly Apple.
  • Leslie Lieman on 05 Feb 12
     
    It is amazing to me that Apple and technology can take center stage in the education conversation without a word of professional development, best practices, learning outcomes... As I have stated before, I/we are an Apple family... but I am worried about the prospect that Apple's role in the textbook industry will eliminate other platforms and in-turn will limit access to many.
Leslie Lieman

Live from Apple's education event at the Guggenheim - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech - 1 views

tech.fortune.cnn.com/...ve-from-apples-education-event

iPad iPads textbooks iBooks education technology interactive

shared by Leslie Lieman on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Leslie Lieman on 28 Jan 12
     
    I am posting two articles: 1) Apple's recent announcement (here) and 2) the criticism (above) by Hack Education blogger Audrey Watters This article is about Apple's announcement to "reinvent the textbook" around the iPad. "The message: it's going to be a lot easier in the future for publishers and educators to create a new generation of interactive textbooks."
Jackie Iger

iPad Textbooks: Reality Less Revolutionary Than Hardware | Wired Science | Wired.com - 2 views

www.wired.com/...ipad-textbooks-learning

technology education iBooks etextbooks

shared by Jackie Iger on 13 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Jackie Iger on 13 Feb 12
     
    An interesting article that explores the question of whether kids will learn more and better on tablets.
  • Katerina Manoff on 13 Feb 12
     
    Thanks for sharing! I think many of the strongest proponents of "tablets for all" would benefit from this more balanced perspective.
Tracy Tan

Irish schools make switch to ebooks; Textbooks go hi-tech as students learn on iPads an... - 0 views

Access to the site is by subscription, so I am including the article here: T'S a sad day for doodlers. The dog-eared textbook is on its final chapter in Ireland as schools switch to ebooks. More t...

ipads proliferation

started by Tracy Tan on 29 Feb 12 no follow-up yet
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