Week #5 – Activity 2: Digital Textbooks (Positive Prospector)

As a K-12 teacher, I believe that digital textbooks can have enormous positive possibilities. First of all, students would have the most up-to-date information available to them in a format where there are no missing or damaged pages. The books would feature interactivity, personalization, accessibility, content streaming, and social connectedness. I believe that this would make students more engaged and consequently more likely to learn more. I am sure that they would enjoy reading on their devices more than reading traditional books, and they would be able to collaborate with one another while reading the textbooks. Secondly, educators could stop worrying about handing out, numbering, and collecting textbooks. They would not have to hunt students down for lost books or replacement fees. Also, educators could rest assured that they have the most up-to-date information for their classrooms (not an old textbook from 1999 that should be given to the history department). Finally, educational administrators will be praised for staying green by not having to dump sets of old textbooks, and they can save money by not having to replace full class sets of books. It would be reassuring for administrators to know in advance that there is a yearly digital license fee that they can prepare for instead of being surprised when hard copies of books need to be replaced. Sincerely, Mrs. Christine Clayton BScH.BIOS, B.Ed, OCT, MET

In my field of work, online learning for students in K-6, digital textbooks could make a positive addition for these three reasons: they could be used to reinforce certain subject areas that a particular student isn't grasping, they can fill the needs of different learning styles and they could be used internally to assist in employee onboarding and training. We offer science, geography, math and language programs in my line of work. Many parents understand that their students find one particular subject area much more challenging than others. Our online activities act to reinforce previously learned skills. The addition of an online textbook would be an amazing resource to link more exploration and learning to our product. Our repetitive, auditory based program is great for many students. Students find pleasure and understanding in the repetition of our activities. However, some students may become more easily bored or crave a greater variety of engaging principles. A digital textbook could be an excellent addition to our clue and rule files associated with each activity. They could be equipped with videos that would capture a student's attention and allow them to refocus. Lastly, as we hire more developers and instructional designers, we could create our own digital textbook that is used to teach certain roles and position. Employees could access the textbook at any time and it would reduce the amount of repeat questions and involvement of other team members.

In my field of work, English as a Foreign Language education, there are a multitude of possibilities with the introduction of digital textbooks. There are several existing textbooks right now that also have App/eText versions and they include the listening activities within, so that students can listen as many times as they want, and even adjust the speed, or view the script at the same time to cater to individual levels. As teaching listening skills is quite difficult, the ability to do this is quite a game changer. Also, by including review activities in the form of games, students will be able to remember content and also study for tests by playing a game in the textbook itself and even go back within the textbook content to check answers all off one single device. Finally, the convenience of having the application on one device (preferably a tablet) would encourage teamwork if one was shared in groups, and have students face each other and not just a screen. This is one thing I am currently struggling with – a blended classroom in my college’s computer lab where I can only see half of the students’ faces from behind their computer screens, whereas if they had one tablet per group, the could work together and teach each other and not just be a teacher-centred lesson, which are being proven more and more to be less effective.

I work with remote online language learners and internationally trained nurses. There are more and more online resources for learners available freely online, and more opportunity for our remote learners to talk with each other on various synchronous tools. However, as an instructor, curating all of these free 'resources' to check for authenticity, value and appropriateness for the language level of my learners is basically a full time job. I end up writing my own exercises and recording podcasts.

The digital textbooks would make my life easier. My learners would have access to high quality materials that I just can't produce as an individual teacher. Having a digital textbook for my learners would free up my time so that I could us my creativity more in the lesson plans and activities. My learners would benefit by having professionally recorded audio to provide my learners with more opportunity to hear other speakers of English. I think having videos to contextualize the communication is another benefit that I can't easily give them remotely.

As a mathematics teacher, I find that many components in traditional mathematics textbook to be of little use. Most publishers include many activities aimed to allow students to explore mathematical ideas, but teachers rarely use them, or follow the procedures set in those activities. Most of the time, the textbook is used simply as a source of practice questions, which really falls short of what a textbook is capable of doing. I believe part of this lack of usage may be because teachers are used to teaching through their own methods, but part of it may also be that the activities are sometimes hard to implement. A digital textbook when it comes to mathematics may allow a different set of inquiry based activities to be available, and become much more accessible to students and teachers. Because digital textbooks are usually available on tablets or portable devices, there is a great potential to use the screen in order to provide 3D animations to demonstrate mathematical concepts of methods, which may make the learning a lot more accessible to students. The graphics and flexibility of digital textbooks may allow for many manipulatives to become digitalized, which will save costs for many schools lacking in funding. Aside from being able to improve upon the functions of traditional textbooks and replacing manipulatives, the social sharing functions in a digital textbook could allow for different modes of assessment from teachers. Traditionally, students display their knowledge through pencil and paper, writing out solutions and presenting an answer. However, because digital textbooks are accessible through portable devices such as tablets or laptops, it may be possible for students to share their solution with their teacher, and include other peripherals such as a video, or vocal presentation of their solutions, which would allow a student to engage more of their 5 senses in attempts to better their learning, but will also allow teachers to have new modes of assessments for students.

I teach into the Renewable Resource department of a polytechnical post secondary institution. In this program we use an LMS called Desire to Learn or D2L. I teach several courses on digital mapping, computer applications, geographic information systems and inventory methods. The LMS provides the opportunity to create a digital textbook in that the courses are divided into modules or weeks and each one contains content, activities, assignments and resources. In some ways, the positive possibilities of digital textbooks have already been achieved in these courses. They are adapted specifically to the outcome of the courses, they allow students to self-study, to prepare for hands-on labs, to work on their own and as part of groups and as a class in peer-to-peer learning exercises and activities. The courses have been designed in some cases on the flipped classrooom model and so lecture times are limited and the focus is instead on the application of skills and development of knowledge through experience and practice, problem solving and collaboration. And so, the courses are also a vehicle for encouraging the development of 21st century skills as well as the explicit learning outcomes for the course. Three examples of how the digital textbook of the LMS have improved the courses are: (i) Adaptable: course material is easy to update and adapt as needed for the course learning outcomes and changes in industry or technologies; (ii) Easy to share and integrate with other courses and instructors: As course is part of a larger program, it is easy to share content and assignments/activities with other instructors and integrate activities with those in other subjects. This diminishes the workload for the students and demonstrates how one skill or knowledge set is linked to another in the suite of courses in the program; and (iii) Interactive and Linked: Students can interact with the materials and with the content through peer-to-peer activities, self assessments, discussions, forums and group projects, They can also link to and create products or examples of their work through external links such as http://www.arcgisonline.com where a map becomes both an artefact of their learning, a journal of the process for creation and a marketable skill that is easy to demonstrate and share with potential employers. From a teacher's perspective, the digital text of the LMS and digital working space also makes it easy to support, monitor and interact with student participants to ensure that content is covered, instructions are clear and resources availalbe for student success and participation.

I teach a two year entry to practice paramedic program and a 3rd year post-grad paramedic program. Both are a 1 iPad per student program. As such, students have a choice between purchasing books or ebooks. On an annual basis, the other faculty and I review various etextbooks for quality and price and to see if we can recommend free or less expense ebook alternatives. Openstax https://openstax.org/ is one source of free peer reviewed textbooks from which we recommend specific texts for specific courses. However, what the books from Openstax and many other etextbook sources lack that would truly add value to the learner is digital interactivity. In an age where the volume and quality of multimedia is continually attracting the attention of our students, interactive etextbooks https://youtu.be/4acVQew_Cn0 are critcally important for publishers to develop, whether they’re open source like Openstax at Rice University or whether they are from the traditional publishing industry.

As a music teacher there are many benefits to the use of digital textbook resources. As a discipline of sound, we rely heavily on audio materials. Traditionally, music is taught 1:1 as skills feedback is required. With a number of assessment providers now available, digital textbooks might be able to include some of this basic assessment functionality thus increasing feedback rates, lowering feedback time, and decreasing teacher work load. Many of the creative tools in music are also going online. Hyperlinking through digital textbooks and integrating student product export to an LMS would be a great way to provide 24/7 access to materials and further reduce administrative headaches.

I currently work in the higher education division of an education company where we publish both print and digital so bear in mind I am approaching this from the perspective of the resource providers who are looking to maintain revenue while print sales are declining. The trend we have seen for a number of years now is print units declining with students opting to pirate or go without the text, relying on powerpoints from the instructor and also what they can glean from lecture, missing out on that second voice that can help to position key concepts differently and help with understanding. Granted the availability of information on the internet has played a part in this decline, the publishers only have themselves to blame as they consistency pushed through price increase to ensure they were making their revenue targets, pleasing shareholders while pushing students to cheaper alternatives or going without a text. Having said all of this the three advantages digital offers me in my role are: 1) Affordability – Currently digital is typically priced at 60% of the cost of the full print text. While there are savings on warehousing and paper print binding, there are still development, production, royalties and rights costs associated with digital that have to be accounted for. It is not as straight-forward as sayig there is no print product so it should be $10 for an etext. Economies of scale are still present and the market is still relatively small when compared to trade publishing. Despite this, digital texts are more affordable and there is upside from a cost savings perspective when the digital text is completely separated from the print ie., ground up digital products offer potentially more savings opportunities. For me, it is easier to talk faculty about a less expensive product and makes it easier for faculty to consider using resources that have significant learning benefits for students when the price is affordable for all. 2) Counteract piracy – currently students pdf print texts, but moving to digitally will make it more difficult to pirate because etexts are frequently housed in a platform like Texidium or vitalsource that are not easy to pdf and post on a peer-to-peer site. 3) The third advantage in my current role is industry/company sustainability. Any educational publisher that fails to transition to digital will have a difficult time surviving. E-texts provide the opportunity for a sustainable revenue model while also transforming the learning experience for students from a passive to active and providing incentive for students while getting away from negatives like new editions and high prices.

My positive experiences with digital textbooks are neatly summed up in the post by mreinoso below. 1. They are generally cheaper to buy. Not by much but in a buyer’s market, isn’t a single dollar enough? Plus, the book arrives immediately. No 3-8 days. Just click, buy, and read. 2. Once I purchase and find some method to store my notes, I can access it anywhere. Commonly, I save PDF type files on Google Docs and then can read, highlight, and edit them from anywhere. On my phone and at work is just as convenient as at home, and no lugging the text about. 3. The searchability is so key. I can search through my notes, I can do a keyword search, I can count the instances of certain terms. These features make paper textbooks look like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Digital textbooks also allow peer collaboration, updating, and the ability to augment content, all of which have been expanded upon in the comments below.