http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/1386424/are_textbooks_becoming_extinct_welcome_to_the_age_of_the/Are Textbooks Becoming Extinct?
Posted on: Thursday, 15 May 2008, 03:00 CDT
The wikitext has the potential to become an integrating force that merges Web 2.0 tools for the betterment of education. By embedding audio, video, interactive tutorials, simulations, and edu- games, the students will have almost limitless depth on curriculum topics.
IMAGINE
if textbooks were alive ... living, changing, evolving, and improving ... never out-of-date!
a textbook that would give students images, videos, and interactive tutorials about a subject, a vocabulary word, or a topic.
a digital textbook that would be student-driven, a model for differentiated learning, and geared toward helping all students learn through visualization, interaction, and simulation.
In the age of Web 2.0, all this and much more is possible. And it's all at our students' fingertips with just a click of a button. Welcome to the "Age of the Wikitext!"
The Problem
By 2008, most school librarians have become aware of Web 2.0. Some of us have more experience than others, but we all know that we are several years into the age of the Read/Write Web (aka the Participatory Web). Unfortunately, the majority of us are digital immigrants, so our depth of knowledge on Web 2.0 technology and social software is rather superficial.
One thing that is consistent for all educators is the proverbial tightening of the belts. As school systems' budgets shrink, there have been a growing number of teacher layoffs. School systems in my state have slowly begun to integrate and mainstream all the students with learning disabilities, eliminating some special education teachers and maxing-out class size caps. This has had a domino effect.
With the increase of heterogeneous grouping, the skill level among students in the same class has grown wider and wider. This has cascaded into a major problem for subject-specific teachers. In order for them to be able to reach, and teach, students of all levels, they have had to differentiate their instruction. One of the positives to come with all this change has been its confluence with Web 2.0 and the tools of the participatory web.
Training teachers in differentiated learning-also called differentiated instruction-has helped alleviate some of the issues, but the educational community then found another major obstacle to instruction. The lessons in schools had changed, but the textbooks they used had not.
Textbooks have been another casualty of budget cuts. Many schools are being told, "Don't even consider ordering new textbooks for next year-the funds just aren't there." If only there was a cost- effective supplement. Hmm ...
Some Perspective
Now let's get some perspective. Let's say you were in college in 1978. When you received an assignment, you would use reference books and journals in the library to do your research. You would then handwrite your notes and use a typewriter for your final draft. You used a slide rule to work on your discrete math homework. Sometimes you called your parents from a telephone booth to beg them to mail you pizza (aka beer) money. Not to mention that your biology textbook was a 6-pound, 700-page tome that took 3 years to get published and was already out-of-date.
Now, 30 years later, your son is entering his second year in college. He takes class notes on a laptop and does his research with online databases and (of course) Google while using a free Wi-Fi hotspot at Starbucks. He gets help with his math homework by contacting classmates through Facebook, and he forgets to call you from his cell phone because he doesn't need money for pizza-he just uses his credit card.
But you don't worry about him too much. His phone is practically a part of his body, so you subscribe to an online service that uses the GPS locator to sync it up with Google Earth, so at least you can see exactly where he is at all times.
Only one thing hasn't radically changed-his biology text, which has now grown into a 12-pound, 1,000-page mammoth of a book that still takes 2 years to get published and is already out-of-date. What's wrong with this picture?
"Textbooks have yet to respond to changes in technology, teaching philosophy, and student life," says Paul Bierman, a professor at the University of Vermont. He made this statement at a workshop he initiated of 54 leading scientists, educators, and technology experts at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. They met under the theme "Reconsidering the Textbook."
"There was broad agreement at the workshop that the role of the textbook is going to change," Bierman says. "They are going to be the integrating force between all these different digital technologies and show you where to go for more depth."
The Solution
This led to my thoughts on how to best address this problem. If textbooks are static and unchangeable, how can I, as internet librarian at Middletown High School in Rhode Island, help? Could this be the age of the wikitext?
My idea to build and create a wikitext gradually came into focus after attending a presentation by Will Richardson during the Internet@Schools conference in 2005. We've all gone to presentations where we have heard our peers speak about the benefits of Web 2.0 in education. It's also become painfully obvious that our students, across nearly all grades, have become well-versed with Web 2.0 tools, so it's not a passing fad.
Richardson once blogged that "Teaching is a collective effort, not an individual accomplishment." This resonates with those of us teaching toward the future. Student input is imperative! If we are to prepare young minds for the creative thinking their futures will certainly require, then it is our obligation to use every tool in our toolbox to effectively impart that knowledge.
In the modern-day working world, quick answers are at our fingertips. Students don't need teachers to give them the information. Anyone can type in a search on their smartphones, send it to Yahoo! or Ask.com, and get an immediate answer sent back to them.
But they do need teachers to give them the skills to evaluate, organize, and apply that information-that's information literacy. Imagine moving from the traditional teacher-directed model of instruction to a student-centered model. Together, both the teacher and the students can use the group's collective intelligence to collaboratively build a wikitext.
The wikitext has the potential to become an integrating force that merges Web 2.0 tools for the betterment of education. By embedding audio, video, interactive tutorials, simulations, and edu- games, the students will have almost limitless depth on curriculum topics. If you add screencasts, podcasts, and text-to-speech widgets, you'll have the potential to differentiate instruction to reach every student across the entire intellectual spectrum.
Collective Intelligence: Wnen tne Wnole Exceeds tne Sum of Its Parts
Let us start by clarifying the meaning of "collective intelligence." There are many variations on the definition, but essentially, collective intelligence is defined as the capacity of human communities to cooperate intellectually in creation, innovation, and invention.
In the Information Age, our society has become more and more knowledge-dependent-knowledge plus information equals power plus influence. It is therefore imperative that we understand (among other things) how collective intelligence processes can be encouraged and expanded in classrooms through the use of Web 2.0 tools such as the wiki. Harnessing a group's collective intelligence is one of the keys to success for modern societies. It is a tool and skill that the students of today will need to be the successful employees of tomorrow.
This vision is also supported by several decades of educational research and a growing body of teaching approaches-sometimes called constructivist or inquirybased learning-where instruction is driven by students' own questions. It adapts to their various learning styles and levels of understanding.
Another approach is called "Backwards Design," where the goals of what should be learned are established first and then the tools- such as digital resources or interactive tutorials-are selected to meet those goals. For example, a teacher can now begin by posing an open-ended problem such as "Explore the origins of the solar system," and give the students a WebQuest of online resources so they may find their own answers. Studentswith strong guidance from the teacher-could then use wiki software to compile their answers. They would embed different resources that they have found to help convey the concepts to their peers from their perspective. Students often learn more quickly from a peer than from a teacher. Most educators can recall a moment in class where a child doesn't fully comprehend a concept from our explanation, but then something amazing happens: A neighbor leans over and whispers a few words and you can see the light bulb go on above the student's head.
The students' additions will become a new chapter in the wikitext. Through student and teacher input, this chapter will perpetually evolve. This living, breathing document will constantly change, grow, and improve-with each and every edit-continuously benefiting from the insights, perspectives, and collective intelligence of the group.Now, this isn't meant to replace the classroom text completely. As long as the digital divide separates students from accessing the internet at home, a wikitext will probably remain a supplement rather than the primary text. But the potential and the benefit to instruction are undeniable. The traditional strengths of the textbook remain: They gather an established body of knowledge within a discipline, present a consensus overview, and filter information through peer review. However, this can also be the downfall of traditional textbooks. The very qualities that give them their weight and authority are often their biggest flaw. Your students are not the peers in "peer review." The peer reviewer-discipline specialists have perspectives that are usually light-years removed from the frame of reference of a 21st-century student. This flaw is compounded by the economics of the publishing industry. The generalized market that publishers seek to tap makes the text barren of any local detail, current relevance, or context from the students' lives. If, through the use of "place- based curriculum," these wiki texts were personalized for a school, and if they were constantly updated through the input of both the faculty and the students, then the benefits would be astounding!
During the past year I have been instructing teachers from different school districts on how to get started creating a wiki text. Getting new projects off the ground is the most challenging part, but they soon snowball and begin to take on a life of their own. After the staff has been trained, they quickly become vested in the project. Soon after that, parents get involved (more so at the elementary level) and these projects grow even faster. It takes a lot of hours and a big commitment by the administration for training, but feedback from students, parents, and teachers has shown that it is worth it. Most wikitext projects may take up to a full school year to get developed, so Fm looking forward to seeing some of these finished projects this summer. I'll report back soon ...
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Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. 
