Apple iBooks for eTextBooks- getting there?

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Posted by admin on January 20, 2012 – 5:40 pm
Filed under EdTech

OK, so Apple launched its new authoring platform for iBooks which is supposed to revolutionize eTextBooks. I’m not sure the revolution is fully realized yet, but this would appear to move us in the right direction. We might be at or near step two of three in the near-term evolution of eTextBooks, which I see as:

  1. Textbooks transliterated for reading in eReaders. Basically, the benefit here is that students can stop carrying around those insanely heavy backpacks. Downsides include lack of ability to notate or highlight, or clumsy ways of doing these things.
  2. eTexts have rich media, ability to notate, some social/sharing component, and include a mechanism for backing up texts and associated meta-data.
  3. All of the above, but platform independent.

From the demo in link above, it looks like rich media and notating are fairly well developed, but I’m waiting to see what social components there are, if any, and how easily they back up meta-data. I’m also a bit turned off by Apple’s continued monopolism (see a discussion here about the controls on content development for the iBook).

MBS Direct has supposedly finally ironed out their web-based reader, and I will report back here after I have been able to test that (in the next couple of weeks).  My problem with web-based readers is that, although they are platform independent, they require an internet connection when you want to access content (barring an “offline” mode which they may have or might develop).

Please comment below with thoughts on where eTexts are heading, what you are using, what you would like to see…

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Schools – Public, Private, Independent, Charter

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Posted by Aaron Eden on December 20, 2011 – 6:58 pm
Filed under General, SEO

Just a quick thought on the terminology used to differentiate school types. Also called “keywords” in the SEO industry, I’ve bumped up against these distinctions many times in recent years in helping schools determine what words people are using to search for schools on the Internet.

Until recently, it seems we had a pretty clear dualistic environment: we had public schools and we had private schools. Not too many years ago now, private schools (with the help of their marketing friends) realized (perhaps rightly so) the negative connotations in the “private” moniker, and opted for the much more approachable term “independent”, which is descriptive of a much more positive aspect of private schools: their independence from much of the state control and regulation their public counterparts are subject to. (Incidentally, the public have not bought into this naming convention, and still search almost exclusively for “private schools” on the Internet).

But now with Charter schools we have a sort of hybrid that threatens to muddy the waters even further. Charter schools also champion their independence (albeit not quite as loosely granted as that of private schools), and yet they are also public (meaning they charge no tuition).

So are charter schools “independent” schools? If they are following the advice of their marketing friends, they will certainly play up that angle. Ironically, if they want to enjoy the benefits of their association with independence in the Internet search world, they would need to get found for searches of “private school”, a term not even private schools want to put on their Web pages.

Good luck everybody!

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Schools and Change – Do We Adapt or Do We React?

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Posted by Aaron Eden on December 20, 2011 – 6:37 pm
Filed under 21st Century Skills, The Big Questions

A recent post by Clay Shirky – Institutions, Confidence, and the News Crisis – got me thinking about schools as institutions, and how they handle change. Here’s a quote form the post:

“The ability of institutions to adapt slowly while preserving continuity of mission and process is exactly what lets them last longer than a single leader or lifespan. When change in the outside world outstrips an institution’s adaptive capabilities, though, the ability to defend the internal organization from outside pressures can become a liability. Stability can tun into rigidity and even institutional blindness.”

Now, Shirky is talking about the news industry here, but the idea applies to all industries. So for schools too, institutional history and momentum are important. But change is inevitable and necessary, and it is how the organization changes that determines how well momentum and continuity of mission are carried through. A key notion here in how change is met – and it is a notion that needs to be made clear – is that  being adaptive is different than being reactive. In other words, all change is not healthy. An organization is adaptive that changes its long term goals based on a changing world, and acts accordingly to meet those goals. A reactive organization changes according to immediate environmental pressures and, if it survives, becomes a product of those pressures instead of a product of its own intention and mission.

These questions come to me:

  1. What are the changes that schools are currently undertaking (private and public), and are they being reactive or adaptive?
  2. Shirky speaks of institutions as needing continuity of mission and process. How much of what we do is up for discussion while still retaining continuity of mission, and is continuity of process a requirement for stability, or is process potentially one of the things that might need to change in adaptation?
  3. Is it perhaps the preserving of schools as institutions in their current form that keeps us from making the changes needed to actually fulfill our mission in education?

Your thoughts appreciated.

Also look for more on these questions in future posts…

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21st Century Skills for Teachers

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Posted by Aaron Eden on February 9, 2011 – 7:29 pm
Filed under 21st Century Skills, Teachers

Teacher skills in 50 words or less.  Go….!

Here’s my stab at it:


“Every teacher should be able to articulate how their lessons engage higher order learning, how they offer the opportunity for development of critical skills, how learning outcomes offer related evidence, and how assessment is used to provide formative feedback in both areas.”

 

I was recently inspired by a WIRED article on the Art of the Elevator Pitch. Couldn’t education benefit from a good pitch?

I’d love to hear how others might phrase a concise statement about the critical skills necessary for teachers.  Please leave comments with your version, or skills that should be added to the list.

Can anyone help spread this around to see if we can get Angela Maiers to post her version?

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Role of Technology in Education

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Posted by Aaron Eden on January 18, 2011 – 6:28 pm
Filed under 21st Century Skills, The Big Questions
As most of us know, literacy is not just about reading any more. The printed book was a giant leap forward in our ability to distribute information, but we are now in the fairly early stages of another information revolution – one that requires the definition of literacy to be expanded. In today’s world, we are dealing with orders of magnitude more information, coming from orders of magnitude more sources, with orders of magnitude (you get the idea) more avenues to distribute and publish – so the problem isn’t simply how to read the information any more: in this new world of information surpluss, it is about directing the flow of information inward and outward, evaluating it and processing it, collaborating with others to do more with it than we can alone – ulitmately making it serve our goals, interests, and needs.
These are skills we take very seriously at Stevenson, and to help further these ends, our job in the technology department is to:
1) manage an evolving infrastructure that can support the practice and use of these skills
2) to support the faculty as they endeavor to weave the development of these skills into their curricula
3) to help identify how the ever-evolving techno-sphere can further learning in all areas

How does technology relate to education, and what role does a technology department play in a school? Read on for some musings…

As most of us know, literacy is not just about reading any more. The printed book was a giant leap forward in our ability to distribute information, but we are now in the fairly early stages of another information revolution – one that requires the definition of literacy to be expanded. In today’s world, we are dealing with orders of magnitude more information, coming from orders of magnitude more sources, with orders of magnitude (you get the idea) more avenues to distribute and publish – so the problem isn’t simply how to read the information any more; In this new world of information surpluss, it is about directing the flow of information inward and outward, evaluating it and processing it, collaborating with others to do more with it than we can alone – ulitmately making it serve our goals, interests, and needs.

These are skills every school should take very seriously, and to help further these ends, the job of a technology department should be to:

1) manage an evolving infrastructure that can support the practice and use of these skills

2) support the faculty as they endeavor to weave the development of these skills into their curricula

3) help identify how the ever-evolving techno-sphere can further learning in all areas

Thoughts, comments?

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