Teaching

How much will digital textbooks shake up education?

iBooks AuthorThis blog was originally published by The Guardian on 18th February 2012.

I am going to admit something right now: I am a bit of a fan of Apple products. I have a MacBook, an iPhone and an iPad 2 and always look forward to the next announcement to come out of Cupertino. When I heard that the keynote speech last month would involve an education-based announcement, I was particularly excited – there was a lot of talk on the web around the idea of digital textbooks and I was intrigued as to what the company had come up with.

For once, the internet buzz had got it right. Apple announced iBooks 2, digital textbooks and iBooks Author. I tracked down the keynote video onYou Tube and it was a typical Apple promotional video: cheesy and packed with the usual spin but undoubtedly exciting and well made. My initial thought was that this could change everything. I immediately downloaded Life on Earth so I could see for myself.

So what does a digital textbook look like? Well, fantastic, on the evidence of LoE. Opening with an inspiring, attention-grabbing video, it is incredibly immersive. The content is excellent with plenty of text and images. There are more videos to watch, imbedded interactive Keynote presentations and a quiz at the end of the second chapter. It was certainly a very satisfying experience and I would have loved to have had one of these when I was at school many moons ago. Could digital textbooks be the future?

Many students dislike having to carry around piles of heavy books – in fact sometimes they dislike doing it so much they purposely leave them at home! Digital textbooks would make this a problem of the past. Students would only need to bring an iPad to school, something that many are doing anyway in some educational institutions.

Another big problem with textbooks, as we all know, is that they are often out of date as soon as they are printed but going digital would negate the need to constantly purchase the most up-to-date physical version of a text. With Apple’s latest technology, textbooks can be revised via an update in iBooks. This has got to be a good thing.

For me, though, the most exciting part of this announcement was the release of iBooks Author. This is available for free via the Mac App store. It allows Mac users to create their own interactive books and submit them to the iBookstore or share them with other iPad users. This could afford teachers the ability to build interactive schemes of work for students to download, I thought; to create immersive training resources or personalised school textbooks in a quick and easy way.

Unfortunately, it is not all good news and there are some obvious drawbacks.

Digital textbooks and books created using iBooks Author can only be viewed on the iPad. This could be a bit shortsighted by Apple, mainly because the tablet is an unarguably expensive bit of kit and many students and schools will not be able to afford them. Schools are already struggling with their budgets and iPads will not be top of the list of things to buy. This may lead to a technological gap between schools.

The second problem is the amount of hard drive space these books use. Life on Earth is a near-1GB download and that’s just for two chapters. The complete volume could take up most of a 16GB iPad: not a lot of good when you want to buy several textbooks.

Finally, there is the issue with the iBooks Author end-user license agreement. It’s quite a hefty topic to discuss fully here and in itself is probably another blog for another day but I would certainly advise you to read this article on 9to5mac.com. I am not sure how I feel about this aspect of Apple’s announcement but it is certainly causing some controversy.

Is this really the digital revolution that Apple would lead us to believe? Or is simply an update of CD-ROM textbooks on an expensive mobile device? Is this something students will buy into or am I looking at it from the perspective of someone who grew up without mobile proliferation and Google?

What do you think? Please share your opinions and thoughts on digital textbooks and iBooks Author in the comment field on this blog.

Is Gove washing his hands of ICT?

Michael Gove

This blog was originally published by The Guardian on 13th January 2012.

Like many ICT teachers across the country I waited with some trepidation to hear Michael Gove’s speech. Many questions were running through my head. What will he say? What will he do? Am I qualified to continue teaching the subject I love? Will I still have a job? The press had put thousands of ICT teachers into a panic. They had labelled ICT teaching as boring. We were told that we were failing our students. This upset many of us and painted us in a bad light to students, parents and schools. There were some seriously angry tweets the morning before Michael Gove’s announcement at Wednesdays BETT conference. But did I jump the gun?

Before Gove’s speech, he had spoken on how the current ICT curriculum in state schools was simply not good enough. We were told that we should drop ICT and all students should be studying computer science and learning to code. Whilst I agree that more computer science and coding should be taught, I don’t see it as something that should take precedence over the more creative aspects of ICT. Surely there is room for both in the curriculum?

This is why Gove’s speech took me by surprise.

His speech started well, it was well researched and informative. Then he hit us with it. As of September state schools will no longer have to stick to the ICT curriculum. This was great news. The current curriculum is tired, restricting and out of date. Finally teachers can be free to innovate and move forward. Then I read between the lines. Michael Gove and the government are simply washing their hands of ICT. By taking away control and government influence he is simply saying “get on with it”.

This opinion is echoed by Mike Matthews (@mikematthewsCDN) who is a Head of ICT at a state school on the south coast in his blog.

“There are some positives in this speech and some good will come out of it, it always does. However, I would say that Michael Gove, under the pretence of setting ICT free, has in fact, simply cut the subject loose. Abandoning it to fend for itself against private industry and interest who only see pound signs not exam results”.

The majority of us have been “getting on with it” for years. Independent and state schools are full of innovative and inspiring teachers that continue to push the boundaries and have done so for a long time. I rewrite or amend schemes of work at the beginning of every academic year. At my school we are teaching students to blog, design apps for mobile devices in groups and creating screen mock-ups. We are teaching students how smart phones, tablets and many more technologies work. We are using students to help teach HTML coding to their peers. This is just a small selection of what we deliver to our students. Schools across the country are doing the same, it just seems to go unrecognised.

As much as ICT teachers appreciate their newfound “freedom” it does come with some problems. Problems I thought Gove was going to address. Those innovative teachers will continue to innovate; those uninspiring teachers will continue to deliver substandard lessons. In fact there is now even less motivation for them to improve their teaching. Why? Because it will not longer be monitored, technically they will no longer have to meet the minimum requirements of the national curriculum.

In my opinion this will also encourage schools to use even more non-specialist teachers. Some non-specialist are fantastic, they are enthusiastic and keen to learn. However, some find having to teach ICT as a bore and therefore deliver uninspiring lessons. Why spend the money to pay for specialist to deliver a subject that no one will be accountable for?

The most worrying problem is that not all students will learn the same thing. Some students, in some schools will have an outstanding, varied, exciting digital education. Some unfortunately will not.

In conclusion we should thank Gove for letting teachers free of the constraints of the national curriculum. However, we would all benefit from reading between the lines.

Let’s continue being the best that we can be and work together to share the resources that we create in order to ensure that all students are prepared for the future.