Business students won’t need to buy books or other materials to earn an associate degree at Virginia’s Tidewater Community College. Faculty have agreed to use “open educational resources.”
Are iPads worth it?
February 4, 2013 by
Are iPads and Other Classroom Gadgets Really Helping Kids Learn? Maybe not, writes Peg Tyre on Take Part.
Wall Street is pouring money into education technology companies, but the enthusiasm may be cooling: Investment in education technology declined in 2011, Tyre writes.
Every new wave of technology that has been tried in classrooms—radio, television, videocassettes, desktop computers and smartboards—has ridden a wave of enthusiasm, rapid adoption and, then, brutally dashed expectations.
“First, the promoters’ exhilaration splashes over decision makers as they purchase and deploy equipment in schools and classrooms,” said Larry Cuban, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and author of Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classoom in an email to me. “Then academics conduct studies to determine the effectiveness of the innovation [and find that it is] just as good as—seldom superior to—conventional instruction in conveying information and teaching skills. They also find that classroom use is less than expected.
While some teachers are using iPads in the classroom in effective ways, most are not, writes Tyre. And hoped-for savings may be illusory.
Adding in training, network costs and software costs, iPads cost school districts 552 percent more than textbooks, writes Lee Wilson of PCI Education on his blog. Wilson’s chart is below.
In a Broad Foundation debate, panelists ask: Which is more important, great teachers or great technology? (I guess we can’t have both.)
Students rent, share, steal or skip textbooks
February 1, 2013 by
College textbook bubble will burst
December 30, 2012 by
The college textbook bubble will burst when the “open educational resources” movement breaks the textbook cartel, writes Mark Perry on AEIdeas.
Since 1978, the cost of education books and supplies (mostly college textbooks) has increased by 812 percent, his chart shows. That’s much more than the very high inflation rate for medical services or new homes and way more than the 250 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index. It’s “unsustainable,” Perry writes.
Never Pay Sticker Price for a Textbook Again, writes Slate.
My husband used to write college engineering textbooks. He hasn’t updated his old book or written a new one because he doesn’t think he can earn enough to justify his time. In part, that’s because publishers charge so much for textbooks that students are refusing to buy them. They share, use out-of-date editions, buy pirated copies online or try to get by without a book. He’s looked at writing an online textbook, but the money doesn’t work that way either.
He’d like to write a new, shorter book that leaves out the skills students no longer need and includes higher-level skills that could get them their first job. But it’s an enormous amount of work. Professors would have to update their courses. And students won’t buy it if it’s too expensive.
Who will write college textbooks in the brave new “open” world? Maybe young professors who want to make their mark. Maybe the whole idea of a single textbook is obsolete.
When college students can’t read the textbook
August 14, 2012 by
A Michigan community college is teaching English, math and biology instructors how to teach reading so students can understand their textbooks.
Also on Community College Spotlight: It’s time to end late registration.
Textbook weirdness
August 7, 2012 by
Thanks, Textbooks gives examples of awkward, weird and just plain bad writing in textbooks. (Send examples to Karl at thankstextbooks@gmail.com.)
This problem had me stumped:
Students pay for fee-heavy debit cards
June 6, 2012 by
Convenience can be costly: Students who receive financial aid via college-sponsored debit cards pay heavy fees.
California lawmakers have advanced two bills that could give college students access to low-cost online textbooks.
How much will Common Core cost?
May 31, 2012 by
States that take a “business as usual” approach will spend an extra $8.3 billion to implement Common Core Standards, concludes a new Fordham study. However, “bare bones” implementation would cost $927 million less than current spending. A ”balanced approach” would cut added costs to $1.2 billion.
Going to online learning materials and teacher training would provide most of the savings, notes Ed Week.
A Pioneer Institute study estimates states would spend $16 billion over seven years to move to Common Core Standards.
“Enemies and critics of the common core want you to believe the worst: that besides being hard, it will be very pricey and likely ineffective,” Chester E, Finn Jr., Fordham’s president, wrote in a foreward to the new report. “But this report says otherwise. Implementation can be modestly priced and likely more effective if states are astute enough to (a) implement differently, (b) deploy resources that they’re already spending, and (c) take advantage of this rare opportunity to revamp their education delivery systems, too.”
Fordham’s estimate doesn’t include the cost of computers and servers needed for online assessments, counters Theodor Rebarber, author of the Pioneer Institute study.
Can math scaffolding hinder learning?
May 22, 2012 by
When I was fourteen, we spent a year in Moscow. I attended a Soviet school that “specialized” in French–that is, it taught French from the early grades. The other subjects (math, literature, history, technical drawing, geography, physics, chemistry, and biology) were in Russian. No one expected me to participate in class, but I insisted on being added to the class list and asked teachers to treat me like a regular student. I was eventually doing the work in all of my subjects except for chemistry and biology, where I lacked the necessary background knowledge and was usually a bit lost. (I barely got by in physics, but I did learn something.)
My favorite classes were math and French. Here is a picture of the math textbook. It took us through algebra, beginning calculus, and some trigonometry. Its 220 pages contained more substance than many a hefty textbook I’ve seen since. When I returned to the U.S., I was ready for calculus but had to take a year of precalculus first, along with my classmates. (It didn’t hurt, as I got to do more trigonometry.)
Recently I have been wondering how this textbook manages to convey so much in such short space, and how I learned so much without finding it particularly difficult. To answer this question well, I would have to work my way through the textbook again, this time with pedagogy in mind. That’s a project for another time. In the meantime, I’ll toss out a few hypotheses.
Well, one obvious reason we were able to learn so much is that there was a standard curriculum through the grades. All students came to this course with similar knowledge and practice. Some were better at math than others, but it wasn’t because they had better preparation. (Of course this isn’t entirely true, as some students had additional resources at home and elsewhere.)
It could also be that the curriculum included fewer topics than math courses in the U.S. do; thus there was more time to learn them thoroughly.
But what strikes me about this little textbook is that it plunges right in. The first chapter talks about inductive proofs. The second goes into combinatorics. There are no pictures except for graphs of functions (and a few circles and rectangles). There are word problems, but they are relatively few. There are no needless “scaffolds.”
Scaffolds in instruction are temporary supports intended to bring students to the point of self-sufficiency. All good instruction uses them to some degree. But certain kinds of “scaffolds” can actually become barriers, complicating the student’s entry into the subject matter. In mathematics, excessive reliance on “visuals,” “manipulatives,” and “real-life” applications can stand in the way of the math itself.
This textbook, by contrast, “scaffolds” the instruction in one way only: it builds from simpler problems to more complex ones. It lacks the “scaffolding” that plagues many a math textbook that I have seen: those colored graphics, tips and strategies, needless word problems, and so on. It has a few word problems, but there are reasons for them to be word problems. The vast majority of the problems use mathematical notation. Thus, students become fluent in it and learn to think in it.
I was recently looking at AMSCO’s Geometry–better than many in terms of presentation. Very little clutter. But even AMSCO has word problems like this: “Amy said that if the radius of a circular cylinder were doubled and the height decreased by one-half, the volume of the cylinder would remain unchanged. Do you agree with Amy? Explain why or why not.” There is no reason to bring Amy into this; Amy’s presence does nothing for the problem. Also, turning this into a matter of opinion (“do you agree or disagree”) confuses the matter. Instead, the student should be asked whether the statement is correct or incorrect.
In bending over backwards to make math “accessible,” we may actually make it inaccessible. What do you think?
E-book nation
May 13, 2012 by
Brought to you by: OnlineUniversities.com
E-textbooks for K-12 schools aren’t ready for prime time, reports Ed Week’s Digital Education.
Recent Comments