Marie’s January Musings
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“We want to reinvent the textbook.”
-- Phillip Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Apple Inc.
A DELICIOUS APPLE
The highly anticipated and widely rumored announcement from Apple regarding its entrance into the textbook market was made on January 19, 2012 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Phillip Schiller, the senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, enthusiastically (some reported even giddily) described the textbook reinventions Apple has developed that will bring inexpensive multimedia interactive textbooks to K–12 and college students.
- iBooks 2—a free app for the iPad that will allow the purchaser to buy digital textbooks that are tailored to each student, highly visual, interactive, and provide feedback in real time. Books are not free. The average text costs $14.99 per student per year. The average cost for a printed text is $65.00 per student for five years. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson have already developed several high school textbooks for the iBook 2. The plan is to create books for K–12 and college as well. Presumably, Apple will get a piece of the pie for each book sold. In case you are wondering if this idea will gain any traction, 350,000 texts were downloaded in the first three days after the announcement. Next question?
- iBooks Author—a free app that will let anyone make their own interactive textbook—or cookbook or children’s book—by following very user-friendly templates. The program assembles the book and formats it for the iPad automatically. While the app is free, authors must give Apple a 30% cut of all sales.
- iTunes U—a free app that provides full courses online—syllabi, details of a professor’s office hours, posts by teachers, and links that take you directly to the required reading for a given class. iTunes U hasn’t been available to K–12 schools until now. K–12 schools can sign up so teachers can deliver fully online courses for free.
Some early concerns are surfacing about the cost of the iPad ($499 at this time) widening the digital divide between the haves and have nots. However, the nonprofit group One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has just introduced a new low-cost and low-power tablet computer, the XO 3.0. This tablet is designed to be inexpensive, use little energy, and be able to brave extreme weather conditions. (OLPD’s mission is to bring modern education to children in the developing world.) The tablet sells for $100 per device, but that price would be lower with enough volume. Incidentally, this tablet is the only such machine to date that can be powered by solar panels, a hand crank, and other sources besides a conventional power outlet. I’m not sure if iBooks 2 can be run on the X0 3.0, but I’m certain that in time the cost of the iPad or some equivalent will become more affordable.
MY TAKE: Technology in education has been around for sometime, with increasing interest and albeit somewhat disappointing initial results. Apple’s entry into the industry will raise the bar for excellence in digital textbooks. The time has come when traditional educational publishers will have to share the space with the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Good. The promise of Apple’s latest programs infuses new energy and excitement into both students and teachers. Learning is going to be stimulating and self-motivating. This is welcome and overdue. But let’s not cut out the vetting of the content of the materials by the experts. The process and delivery of the materials will be better than ever for learners, but what they learn is still important.
PARDON MY BOAST
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently released its 17th Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K–12 Performance, Progress, and Reform. The comprehensive report grades all 50 states and the District of Columbia according to data from national test scores, state education policies, charter school regulations, and other benchmarks of quality. The envelope please:
The top five states are 1) MASSACHUSETTS, 2) Vermont, 3) New Jersey, 4) Colorado, and 5) Pennsylvania.
RHEE-FORMED
Michelle Rhee, former controversial chancellor of Washington D.C. Public Schools, resigned her position more than a year ago, but she is certainly not gone from the education scene. Rhee founded Students First, a nonprofit national reform group that aims to improve education in the U.S. She announced in December that her organization would soon enroll its millionth member.
During the past year, Rhee has successfully lobbied state legislatures in Michigan and Nevada to overhaul teacher evaluations and end “Last In, First Out” policies. One of her goals for this year is to lobby for reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which places even more emphasis, not less, on the results of standardized tests. At her frequent speaking engagements, Rhee is often challenged by boisterous protesters opposed to her anti-union, take-no-prisoners approach to public education. She is controversial, but she has a passion for her point of view and should be heard. Her positions are almost the polar opposite of Diane Ravitch. Now that’s a debate I would love to see!
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE KEYBOARD
So say Professor Anne Mangen, a reading expert from Stavanger Univerisity in Norway, and neurophysiologist Jean-Luc Velay of Marseille University. The results of their research suggest that children and students who write by hand learn better than those who type. Why? Apparently, something is lost in the brain process when switching from pen and book to computer screen and keyboard. When writing by hand, the movements involved leave an imprint in the part of the brain called the sensorimotor. This process helps us to recognize letters. Simply pressing on a keyboard produces a different response in the brain, which means it does not strengthen the learning mechanism in the same way. I recently attended a Handwriting in the 21st Century Summit? (their question mark, not mine). My blog about the Summit is included elsewhere in this website’s blog section.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It is a new year and with it springs the eternal hope for better things to come. I am energized daily by the new events shaping the education and publishing worlds. It’s not often in one’s life that you can be present in the middle of a tidal wave of change. Change that’s happening so fast you can barely catch your breath. I do have great hope for education. We are asking the right questions and braving the needed reforms. I have hope for publishing as well. It is not business as usual, but it’s still business—there are still learners, and the industry needs to respond to those innovations that can better provide what learners want and need. Happy 2012.
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