As a follow-up to the recent blog posts on Florida's digital textbooks legislation, these are some important questions, from Virginia's recent eBook pilot review, to consider that could affect the implementation of Florida's policy.
What's the ideal infrastructure set up to support this kind of learning environment?
How do we make sure every child has the same rich experience when not all of them have high speed Internet access at home?
How do we support and prepare teachers to use mobile devices and e-books for learning effectively?
What are the implications of students not having Wi-Fi access at home?
How do you overcome the challenge of syncing and purchasing apps in volume?
What do you need to support the devices besides wireless connectivity?
Florida’s legislation outlining guidelines for the implementation of digital instructional materials (aka textbooks) in Florida’s classrooms, SB 2120, was signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott on May 26, 2011. Specifically, the legislation states:
Beginning in the 2015-2016 academic year, all adopted instructional materials for students in kindergarten through grade 12 must be provided in an electronic or digital format.(Line 1085 of page 38)
The bill goes on to specify its definition of “electronic” v. “digital” format materials:
(a) “Electronic format” means text-based or image-based content in a form that is produced on, published by, and readable on computers or other digital devices and is an electronic version of a printed book, whether or not any printed equivalent exists.
(b) “Digital format” means text-based or image-based content in a form that provides the student with various interactive functions; that can be searched, tagged, distributed, and used for individualized and group learning; that includes multimedia content such as video clips, animations, and virtual reality; and that has the ability to be accessed at anytime and anywhere.(pg. 38)
In the legislature’s bill analysis of this legislation, little “analysis” is done to assess the actual implications of this mandate, both in terms of cost and timeline/logistics for implementation, or anything else for that matter. (See pages 4 and 9 in the bill analysis for complete “analysis”).
By August 1st of each year, beginning with the year 2011, each School Board in Florida must report to the state’s Dept. of Education the “school or schools in its district which have been designated as pilot program schools” for the digital textbooks initiative. (See bottom of pg. 33). As per the legislation, school districts must also report (beginning in 2012) the following information based on the pilot program schools:
(a) Successful practices;
(b) The average amount of online Internet time needed by a student to access and use the school’s electronic or digital instructional materials;
(c) Lessons learned;
(d) The level of investment and cost-effectiveness; and
I recently came across this TED Talk by Rice University professor (and Univ. of Illinois alum) Richard Baraniuk, where he discusses the concept of open-source education. In the video, Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system, which essentially "cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world."
Florida’s legislation on digital textbooks in all public schools by 2015 is significant in that it would be one of the first of its kind in the country. Presently, only two other states in the U.S. have a similar law in their books. One of those states being California, where legislation encourages, yet does not mandate, digital textbooks in public schools by 2020. Another example is the state of Illinois where legislation was passed in 2010 expanding the definition of textbooks to include digital and electronic formats and/or eReaders. Florida’s law remains by far the most ambitious of all measures proposed at the state level, requiring full implementation of digital textbooks by 2015.
However, this measure presents a number of challenges for state Dept. of Education (DOE) administrators and local school districts given its ambitious timeline and scope. One of the major challenges being the recent decrease in funding for public K-12 education in Florida, largely a result of decreasing property values/tax collections, and the sun-setting of federal stimulus dollars allocated to the state over the past two years.
The law also presents a challenge in terms of scope, as it may be generally easy to implement in one school as a pilot (like the one featured in this video) but may be a much more complex issue implementing it at a district-wide level in a school district like Miami-Dade County (the largest in the state and fourth largest in the nation). In a district like Miami-Dade, coming up with over 320,000 eReaders may prove to be quite a logistical and financial challenge. That’s without even taking into account a whole other host of issues in terms of bandwidth capabilities, staff training, IT support, etc.
Ultimately, the interesting part of this legislation is that the language per se does not require eReaders, it requires “digital” or “electronic” instructional materials. Therefore, one could potentially argue that this is really an issue of making textbooks available on the web, or in PDF format, and not necessarily providing a device (i.e. eReader) to each student. The issue with this then becomes one of equity and access (every child does not have a computer at home); an issue which school districts could only solve by providing each student with an eReader, just as they would be provided with a textbook.
Many see eBooks as the textbooks of the new millennium. Like traditional textbooks, they can be used for learning as a supplement to teacher lectures or to revisit concepts taught in class. But unlike traditional textbooks, they could also help clarify concepts or bring to life content by way of embedded video clips and/or 3-D models. Digital textbooks are truly at “the center of a whole ecosystem of services – such as homework-management systems and video-capture technology for recording lectures –”, all of which can serve a greater purpose to millennials than the average paper textbooks of the past.
There is also the issue of interactive versus simply digital. Does it matter or make a difference? Absolutely. Are all digital textbooks created equal? Absolutely not. Because the real value of having interactive versus simply digital textbooks lies in the potential to engage students outside the classroom. Effective interactive components are what will set e-books apart from regular hardcover textbooks. And infusing interactive features, such as video and 3-D technology into digital textbooks will make them more effective and engaging than the average traditional text.
Another value of interactivity in digital textbooks, noted in a recent Newsweek article, are virtual sharing capabilities. New technology makes it possible for a student “to follow another’s “note stream,” or view a heat map of the class’s most-highlighted passages.” This takes interaction with classmates to a whole new level, both in and outside of class. Simply digital textbooks do not afford students these opportunities to interact and share content; they can lack basic components such as highlighting and note-taking capabilities on the actual text, something that is possible even in traditional paper textbooks.
One of the more obvious distractions of interactive eBooks when compared to simply digital or traditional textbooks could be student concentration in class during lectures. This would be an issue mainly in the classroom setting, where students could drift off into textbook videos (or other interactive activities) during a teacher’s explanation of the material. Furthermore, if we were to consider that interactive textbooks can only be accessed on the web, and not fully on an e-reader (such as Kindle), due to their interactive components, this may cause increased distractions for students who may be inclined to browse the web instead of focusing on the textbook material. Conversely, if we take the case of simply-digital textbooks, these could be consolidated into an e-reader, where if used in class, would limit the student’s attention span to the reading material on the device and not the internet as a whole.
Regardless of the pros and cons of interactive versus simply-digital textbooks, at a time when “the average teen spends more than seven hours a day using technological devices,” it is only logical that academic content would also be made available to them in formats that are supported by the devices they spend so much of their time on. Making textbook content available on iPads, e-readers, and other mobile devices just makes sense given the technological environment in which today’s learners thrive.
For more information on this topic, read the following document published by Florida State University: From Paper to Pixel: Digital Textbooks.
Technology has changed the way we live, the workplace, and inevitably, the set of skills required for 21st century workers. We can no longer assume that traditional brick and mortar classrooms are preparing citizens for the jobs of the future, or in many cases, for jobs already on the market. Clayton Christiansen was right when he said that mobile technology is changing how we learn, and it only makes sense that it would also change how we think about teaching. Mobile devices can be valuable tools for teaching and learning because they help deliver content through platforms on which digital natives are spending more and more of their time (i.e. smartphones, iPads, and laptop computers).
Mobile learning can strengthen the learning opportunities teachers are attempting to create both in and outside the classroom. It can help promote student participation and engagement by taking the academic content to the mobile world in which students interact. For example, an English or social studies teacher may ask students to engage in discussions about a literary piece or historical event through a Facebook discussion board or Twitter. The shy students, who in a normal classroom setting may be hesitant to raise their hand and participate, may now feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts through familiar social media platforms such as Facebook. This type of interaction can happen both in and outside of class, as exemplified in the video below. Ultimately, mobile learning can strengthen learning opportunities by creating a learning environment that promotes “anywhere, anytime” learning.
Of course, there are also barriers to mobile learning. One of the main barriers, in my opinion, is access; both in and outside the classroom. In schools, access is dependent on the number of computers available to students, technological resources available to teachers, and internet connectivity. Outside the classroom, where teachers may have academic content posted online for students, access may be limited by whether the student has a smartphone or whether there is a computer at home or a library nearby. However, there have recently been positive advances in helping to address this issue of access. The federal government, through its BroadbandUSA program has provided grants to a number of under-served communities to help increase internet access and access to mobile devices (such as laptops). You can read a brief note here on the details of the program in one of the communities that received the grant, Miami, Florida.
Another barrier to mobile learning are issues of privacy and/or cyber-bullying, both of which are essentially an inevitable side-effect of mobile technologies and social media. The good news is that school administrators are taking action to help remediate these issues. Each year, more and more school districts across the U.S. are developing policy documents/guidelines and regulations on how to address these specific barriers.
Ultimately, mobile technology it creates opportunities for both teachers and students to innovate, create, and think outside the box to enrich and supplement academic content and facilitate learning.
Once I started thinking about the different uses of mobile photos and videos, I realized that there are truly countless ways of using these resources in education, both in and outside the classroom. In theory, they are essentially an audio/visual form of communication, but in practice they’re so much more, particularly when it comes to learning. At present, it is difficult to identify the entirety of the different types of learning that can take place through mobile devices, as they vary greatly by field and audience. What is clear is that the use of mobile devices for the acquisition of knowledge is in no way limited to formal types of learning alone. With the increased prevalence of social media, much of the learning promoted by mobile photo and video technology is informal and easily shared with others. And with the countless number and variety of mobile devices available today, people can take photos and access videos from their smartphones, iPads, and/or wireless laptop computers seamlessly. The chart below illustrates the use of mobile photo and video technology among teenagers.
When it comes to learning, as a specific example I thought of language studies as an academic area where videos can help facilitate and enhance learning. In learning a new skill such as a foreign language, audio is a crucial component in teaching pronunciation and diction. Being able to use video technology, both live (such as Skype) and pre-recorded, can significantly help improve a language student’s pronunciation. This concept is by no means new, as it is perhaps underutilized. At the University of Notre Dame, the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures runs a successful program based on the concept of video technology. Notre Dame’s language learning initiative “offers several virtual conversation partner programs incorporating both live video-conferencing and asynchronous video boards."
Mobile photo and video technology unquestionably changes where, how, and why people learn, as well as who learns. The ‘where’ becomes: anywhere there is cell-phone coverage or a wireless signal. The ‘how’ becomes: visual/audio/interactive. The ‘why’ becomes: because every time it is more and more inevitable to run into the content inundated into mobile devices. And the ‘who’ learns becomes: anyone with access to mobile technology; not just students in a classroom or with a smartphone.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that mobile devices are becoming a new paradigm in education. With their ever-increasing functionality and ability to deliver content, academic or professional, virtually instantly, it was inevitable that they would soon make their way into the classroom. Today, more and more people are accessing content ranging from news and weather updates to training and academic materials by way of mobile devices. This is no longer an assumption or estimate, but a well documented fact. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that “nearly half of all American adults (47%) report that they get at least some local news and information on their cell phone or tablet computer.”
On a personal level, I own a smartphone and a laptop, and it truly makes me feel like I can be productive anytime, anywhere. With my smartphone for work (provided by my employer), I can answer e-mails regardless of whether I am in front of my desktop computer in the office or walking into a meeting. I can research relevant news/issues/developments on the web, and I can check-in with co-workers in the office. Specifically on mobile photos and video, my smartphone is greatly useful for my job, as it allows me to post photos and videos of events that I’m attending (in real-time) on to Facebook and other social media sites. This type of “mobile documentation” helps me keep my boss (a local School Board Member) and his constituents updated on school district happenings across the city.
My mobile devices have become quite a valuable tool for me, not just on a professional level but overall in my day-to-day activities and interactions outside of work. I love the flexibility and versatility they provide.
Thank you for visiting my blog on global education! I hope that you find the posts on this site to be interesting and relevant to the current issues affecting education in an increasingly globalized world.
Over the coming weeks, I will share my thoughts on a number of issues in education ranging from mobile learning and social media to foreign language instruction and the challenges of educating “digital natives”.
I hope that all who visit this site and share and interest in the topics discussed come back frequently and contribute to the conversation on these issues.
