ED521 A17

Future of Textbooks

At the higher education level, students are finding and selecting digital replacements to traditional textbooks.  Students prefer digital research options to print resources. Most college students believe that interactive content is a valuable learning asset.  They like the digital resources, because of the lower cost and they are more portable.  Paperless classrooms or classrooms that are using less paper are slowly changing at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels.  Laptops, iPads, tablets, and cell phones are now widespread in the modern classrooms.  Most students use these tools to access course materials, to take notes, create papers, email, schedule events, and the list goes on.  Textbooks can be very valuable when planning a curriculum.  They can be used has a framework that can guide a teacher with an outline of what should be taught within that class.  However, students do not want to spend hours reading and answering questions from a textbook for the whole year.  Boring!  Using technology tools correctly in the classroom can benefit students’ learning.  Teachers need to be trained and need time to plan activities that require students to be engaged.  The school that I teach at relies heavily on textbooks to meet the state standards, but a teacher can supplement the textbooks by using a variety of technology tools.  The following is a short list to bring existing textbooks come to life.  Students can post links to a sticky board site, like Padlet, that relate to the chapter’s topic from the textbook.  Students could add images/photos that describe/show the topic being studied in the textbook to the Instragram class account.  Students could use a variety of graphic organizers to engage them with the information from the textbook.  Students could create short videos of the information their studying to make readings come to life.  Technology should be used to empower teachers and improve students’ learning.  The main advantage of using digital textbooks is the updating feature of things happening now can be added to the existing form.  The language function makes it possible for students to toggle between different languages.  Another advantage of using digital books is the lower cost.  However, technology doesn't promise better student achievement.  If the teacher doesn't know how to use it, it’s not going to make much of a difference.  So, what’s in store for textbooks in the future?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see and be willing to accept the changes as they occur!