[IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:45 PM, K. K. Subramaniam<subbukk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 11 June 2009 09:55:26 pm Sameer Verma wrote:
>> Some people argue that books can only cover so much. Well, paper books
>> are limited. Electronic books are not. Syllabi are designed to address
>> specific teaching goals in limited time. I use syllabi every semester,
>> and I'm not against that approach. However, if books were delivered
>> electronically, and children had free access to content, then learning
>> would take on a different shape...at least for some.

> An digital math book is still a math book. It doesn't take on long festering
> problems in the schooling system. We are not looking at the larger potential
> of digital medium in solving these problems.

But that is precisely what some of us are doing. You are quite right
that the static textbook is an oppressive burden on teachers and
students alike. These books have been designed to enforce the tyranny
of The Right Answer in the back of the teachers' edition, and on the
standardized test. But the real questions that we need to educate
children for do not have Right Answers.

What is this? Is it real? How do I know?

Is this true? Why should you believe me?

What next? What should we do even if we don't want to?

(Academics will recognize these questions as the essence of ontology,
epistemology, and ethics, but we don't need the $2 words for
children.)

Politics is by definition the community's method for dealing with
questions that the community (Greek polis) does not agree on.

Science is not the study of what we know for sure, but of what we
hardly know at all, and how we can become sure, within defined limits.

Technologies are often treated as solutions in search of problems, or
answers in search of questions. It is far better if we have some idea
of what the questions and problems are.

Courts of law have elaborate methods for trying to sift through two or
more sides of a case, and the rest of the legal system has to come to
grips with what is or should be a case.

Philosophy and religion often claim to have all of the answers, but
this claim is even more often disputed, sometimes violently.

Here is question of some importance: Almost all education systems in
the world were put in place by Imperial powers, whether at home or in
their colonies, with the aim of keeping the population in order and
providing soldiers, government functionaries, professionals, teachers,
and so on to run the Empire without making trouble for the rulers. The
courses of instruction were designed so that none of these classes
would know enough to challenge the authorities (Kings and Queens,
Emperors and Empresses, aristocracies, and captains of industry) in
their programs of conquest, pillage, and plunder. Those in authority
sent their children to quite different schools, designed to teach them
to rule, and to care for the welfare of the people only in so far as
it supported the aims of the State.

These systems remain largely in place in former colonies and former
Imperial home countries. In no case are these systems suitable for
free peoples. What is, and how can we get it?

John Dewey attempted an answer a century ago in Democracy and
Education. His prescription has been effectively blocked ever since.
Not that he had The Right Answers to everything in education, but it
was a start. What have we seen since? A little Montessori, a little
Piaget, a little Bruner, a little Alan Kay and Seymour Papert, and so
on, none of it previously effective in tackling the root problems.

But now things are different. Instead of everybody learning the same
lesson from the same printed textbook on the same day by the same
method, we have, with computers and Free Digital Learning Materials,

o collaboration
o discovery
o multiple approaches
o continuous improvement of teaching materials by students and teachers
o sharp tools
o powerful ideas
o how to ask the right questions, rather than how to memorize or
calculate the right answers

Maybe. If we make it so. Are you in?

> The subject/timeslots/syllabus system (which makes sense in a college) has
> percolated down to K7 levels and is doing more harm than good. Teachers want
> to tagged as 'science teachers' and 'math teachers' and 'gym teachers'

See Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, for principles
that go a long way to explaining this phenomenon.

> forgetting that what every K7 child needs to know is something every teacher
> should know and be able to teach.

Unless they have been taught to forget it.

> Timeslots and lesson plans don't take into
> account different learning sensitivities of children.

"You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one
way."--Marvin Minsky

> They are taught about
> rains in peak summer because that is the order in the textbook! School bag
> burden is a serious health hazard [1].

Almost any netbook weighs less than one hardcover textbook. The OLPC
XO-2 is expected to cost less than one such book: $75. Even in
countries with only small paper-covered textbooks, and many fewer of
them, the laptop will cost no more than three or four years' books,
while giving access to enormous riches.

> With digital medium, hyperlinked 'digibooks' can be composed, distributed and
> tailored easily.

Not just hyperlinked. We can embed software in learning materials. The
concept is illustrated but not yet achieved in
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Gravity.odt,
which is based on Alan Kay's design for teaching gravity to
ten-year-olds. I intend to do it up in Walter Bender's Turtle Art
Portfolio software next, and ask others to implement it in Smalltalk,
Scratch, or other appropriate software.

> Teachers can introduce digibooks that are tailored to
> age/stage/local needs rather than by subject/syllabus, say on a monthly basis.

"We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught
effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any
stage of development."--Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education

> Children chose their own pace and depth while working through the monthlies.
> Monthlies can be printed on paper for those regions that are not yet ready for
> digibooks. The school bag burden will disappear.

Exactly.

> [1] http://www.hindu.com/edu/2006/02/21/stories/2006022100170400.htm
>
> Subbu
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>



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And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)