Wouldn’t it be great if textbooks were published online with dynamic comment fields so that students like Matthew LaClair could raise these sorts of issues directly in the margin of the book. imagine what a terrific conversation might unfold and how much deep engaged learning might be encouraged as a result.
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A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
Textbooks are the worst examples of the problems that run through all (bad term, I know) scholarly communications (being as they are basically the calcification of scholarly communication).
I used to think first the e-textbooks would be a great way to cut down on the massive, papery waste of the things, and then that once they were digital these kinds of conversations could ensue, but between the DRM, the institutional subscription costs, the copyright the publisher would hold over user contributions and the data silo effect of putting all your ideas in one margin, the idea of the “textbook” becoming a feed aggregator, micro-blogged page notes and something like ShiftSpace seems more conductive to long-term scholarship…
you might be interested in the post of a couple of days ago re-conceiving a “textbook” as a learning space. /blog/archives/2008/04/where_minds_meet_new_architect.html
Yeah, I’ve seen both that and the collaboration with NYU and look forward to following them both.
The problem as I see it is that textbooks largely arise from the relative scarcity of individual primary and secondary sources that they draw upon, and are, like journal subscriptions, a form of academic publishing that is often an unfortunate compromise between the functions of learning and discourse and the necessary physical forms those have to take.
I’m sure this is largely a difference of emphasis, but the “library” as a learning space with textbooks as corridors to rooms (except without the emphasis on aborescent knowledge structures that that implies!) seems far closer to the good things textbooks were designed to accomplish, without the negative, editorial consequences of how they are currently practised.
I work for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and I just want to point out that we do have lots of textbooks online, but they are behind a secure login page, so I don’t see how “dynamic comment fields” would be (or should be) made public {in fact many of our systems do have dynamic notes fields and highlighting/markup tools}. We are collaborating with ANGEL Learning to transform K-12 textbooks into an integrated course management system with even more dynamic Web 2.0ish functionality. Public schools have long avoided converting to online textbooks–partly out of fear of the unknown and mostly out of considering the costs of 1:1 computing, upgrades, maintenance, and high-speed internet.
Matt,
thank you very much for chiming in here, but i never said anything about making dynamic comment fields in a textbook “public” — my point was that it would be great if, for example, the students IN Matthew LaClair’s class could have an extended conversation in the margins about the issue he raised. no need to make it public beyond the particular classroom. can the student’s in your online textbooks respond to each other’s notes?
one highschool teacher i know who is using CommentPress in one of her classes, says that the effect has been to expand the boundaries of the classroom to include the home because the students’ are continuing the discussion in class at home but within the margin of the text they are studying.
I used CommentPress with a group of adolescents reading short stories and a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. We combined printed books and a lengthy essay I wrote introducing García Márquez to my students using primary and secondary sources to illustrate the history of Colombia. This was all done in Spanish. Here are some of my students’ reactions:
When I finally became accustomed to the blog, I realized that it is in fact a very useful and helpful tool. It allowed us to continue discussions that would otherwise die out when the bell rings, and helped us reach a deeper level of understanding of the finer details of the stories and books we read.
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At first, using the blog felt slightly forced, simply because it was unfamiliar, and therefore, all of our initial comments seemed slightly too formal and didn’t utilize the purpose of the blog — communication. As we got more accustomed to writing shorter posts more frequently, I ended up really enjoying the blog, as it allowed the type of communication that goes on in class, natural, analytical, but not as formal as an expository piece of writing. Despite its informality, the blog gave us time to really sink our teeth into the text and produce well thought out comments that we perhaps wouldn’t come up with automatically sitting in class.
I really enjoyed the blog because it permitted a development in my thoughts about the literature we read; as time went on, my ideas changed, and each post didn’t aim to prove a central thesis, which it normally would if we had been assigned one take home essay. My favorite part of the blog was reading what my classmates had to say. When writing a paper, one often ends up narrowing their perspective as they are focused on only one thing, or one area of the body of work
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I liked the blog a lot. I felt it added to the discussion that we had in class, and not only could we build off the themes we talked about in class on the blog and explore areas we particularly found interesting, but also we could talk about what we had written on the blog in class. By writing a couple of times each week it kept me up to date on the books we were reading and the ideas we discussed. Similarly, as we could all see each other’s work, it offered different perspectives on certain topics and allowed for debate.
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First, even though it is something new and unusual right now, with new technology, education is changing to allow us to gain so much more information in faster ways. I think the blog allows us to use technology to get the most out of our work. Also, different from an essay or test, on the blog there is not really a way to cram because we write a little at a time; our work becomes a lot more about quality too. With the blog we can add to our own ideas or to the ideas of others and it allows us to hold a conversation deeper than what we discuss in class because there are no time restraints and it gives for a chance to process our ideas and think about what we want to say before saying it.
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I thought the blog worked wonderfully. Firstly, it was, I thought, nice to be able to explore a number of different themes in our writing, rather than have an essay entirely structured around one thesis. It also worked as a means of continuing discussion outside of class; an essay is just between the teacher and student, while this allowed dialog between the entire class. In class discussion, students are less accountable for what they say; they don’t always have to back it up or face being challenged. The blog thus allowed a more formal form of debate with increased accountability, while still maintaining some degree of informality, or at least a conversational feel.
I am an editor at a relatively small higher ed publisher and am interested in the idea of a textbook that offers this kind of dynamic capacity. Has anyone tried out CafeScribe (www.cafescribe.com)? It’s still in beta form, I think, but it purports to offer something a social networking site that revolves around textbooks. This might finally make it easier (and more fun) to use e-textbooks than it ever has before. Could it also offer faculty an easy way to encourage deeper learning and publishers a way to create products that aren’t completely static? Or will it descend into a student form of stealing notes from each other? I’m interested to hear if anyone has tried it out.