Journal #4

Online textbooks: the future of Learning? – by Chris Moran
San Diego Union-Tribune, Sunday October 7, 2007, Pages B1 & B5.
Online textbooks: the future of learning?

This article looks at a Montgomery High School teacher Gerald French who gave his Biology students a choice – book or online. Mr. French’s hope was that he could entice hesitant learners into learning. He hoped to prepare his students for the technological future. By teaching with an online book the students would be honing their technology skills, and improving their learning skills in a non-traditional method. A method that will in all likelihood will become the method of the future. Permission was given for one class to be taught in this method, but he engaged all four of his classes. Upon review, The Office of Education inspectors, not seeing evidence that all the students with passwords had access requested that he issue books. He feels that by “Having to issue books to students who have computers takes away his leverage to coax this students into the 21st-century-style learning.” The article goes on to describe the issues around online learning and the shortage of textbooks for schools. Many publishers have drifted towards the online market. This issue is going to become more important in the future. Some students may still favor the physical comfort of a book. The Lemon Grove School District has issued laptops and online books to their entire middle school science and social studies classes through a Microsoft program, but they are still bundled with a physical book. The end of the article points out that if you can’t be sure a student will open a physical book, how can you be sure they will use an online book?

1. How do you show evidence that the students with passwords also have computers and Internet access? This issue has been bothering me for two weeks. The Lemon Grove middle school project where all the students were given a computer and an online account is great, but unreachable for most schools. Is there a real way to grant computer and access to all students? Even now I know students that have no access to computers or to the web. Unless there is a way to grant every student in a school district access and then provide them with a computer to access those accounts, you can’t. But you can start slowly, grade by grade. This would lessen the initial output a school district might face and eventually bring all students to an equitable level of access to online learning. Eventually, all learning will migrate toward the inclusion of technology in school.

2. How do you ensure that a student is receiving an equal level of learning online or by book? In the global environment that exists today all people will have to have some level of computational expertise, but unless there is a social revolution I am not sure that education will ever be equal. A school may use a physical book for class, with a student having to independently having to do research to learn more, or online with the same text, but access to instantaneous additional information. Given that both could be identical, it really comes down to the teacher and the learning environment.