Save education? Good grief, saving education is not the province of a single corporation (or even one in collaboration with the textbook publishers who have not been K-12’s good friends). Textbooks, regardless of how good they are, will not save education. Technology (and good materials) can enhance good to great teaching however.
The expensive, exclusive approach taken by Apple vis-a-vis education has crippled them and their influence in K-12 since the Apple IIe. As a K-12 administrator I liked Apple products, but they just were not cost effective. If Apple had announced a color tablet for under $200 and an authoring system without the poison bullets, maybe, just maybe, the company would have brought us a game changer.
I’m an iPad user and advocate, but I also am a strong advocate of Google’s free array of tools for teachers and there are others. This morning I spent time looking at CK12.ORG – FlexBooks and Wolfram’s Education Portal–very impressive and they are free and customizable as are the much touted Khan Academy materials. Inexpensive tablets, multi-platform authoring tools? Bring them on, please!
Putting fancy animations and graphics in a textbook is neither disruptive, nor helping education. It perpetuates the misguided notion that learning is a transaction, not a process. No matter how pretty a textbook is, it still steals learning opportunities for the students who should be learning the processes for gathering, vetting, and making meaning from what they learn. When Apple removed Scratch from the AppStore it was clear they had sold their soul to the Devil. The stranglehold of textbook publishers on education remains in place, even if the money goes to Apple instead of Pearson. And, students can NOT publish rich media iBooks without licensing some software from Apple. Read the contract – it is all there in plain legalese.
Save education? Good grief, saving education is not the province of a single corporation (or even one in collaboration with the textbook publishers who have not been K-12’s good friends). Textbooks, regardless of how good they are, will not save education. Technology (and good materials) can enhance good to great teaching however.
The expensive, exclusive approach taken by Apple vis-a-vis education has crippled them and their influence in K-12 since the Apple IIe. As a K-12 administrator I liked Apple products, but they just were not cost effective. If Apple had announced a color tablet for under $200 and an authoring system without the poison bullets, maybe, just maybe, the company would have brought us a game changer.
I’m an iPad user and advocate, but I also am a strong advocate of Google’s free array of tools for teachers and there are others. This morning I spent time looking at CK12.ORG – FlexBooks and Wolfram’s Education Portal–very impressive and they are free and customizable as are the much touted Khan Academy materials. Inexpensive tablets, multi-platform authoring tools? Bring them on, please!
Putting fancy animations and graphics in a textbook is neither disruptive, nor helping education. It perpetuates the misguided notion that learning is a transaction, not a process. No matter how pretty a textbook is, it still steals learning opportunities for the students who should be learning the processes for gathering, vetting, and making meaning from what they learn. When Apple removed Scratch from the AppStore it was clear they had sold their soul to the Devil. The stranglehold of textbook publishers on education remains in place, even if the money goes to Apple instead of Pearson. And, students can NOT publish rich media iBooks without licensing some software from Apple. Read the contract – it is all there in plain legalese.
Apple is good at disrupting, but disrupting is not the same as saving.
Reblogged this on Dhasty01's Blog.