Comments on: The End of Textbooks (it’s not what you think/hope)

By: ???????

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By: tablet pc laptops

tablet pc laptops — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:03:11 +0000

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By: Joan

Joan — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:37:55 +0000

At our high school our literacy committee reminds staff to have an introductory lesson on using their textbook called “reading around the text.” Those that use the strategy give their students a great study skill that translates well to higher learning.

The trend to having only classroom sets of textbooks started in our middle schools about 12 years ago. The high school teachers denounced the trend, but now embrace it. High cost of textbooks and high loss made them throw in the towel. When departments tell me about textbook adoption processes, I ask the school district to also buy some for the library for overnight circulation. They say yes every time.

Cheers and congrats on your national award. je

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:20:33 +0000

I went to high school from 2000-2004 and we were able to take our textbooks home, but we only had one copy of each book, so we had to carry them around everywhere. I wasn’t aware that there’s been any change that prohibits textbooks from leaving the school (at least in California).

By: Janet Hawtin

Janet Hawtin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:46:37 +0000

a book on music, art, surgery, ceramics, love, can be concentrated information but it is often in the exploration of the information in a tactile or a discursive manner which makes information real.

we need to live learning
the internet is increasingly powerful because of its living texts.
herein.

janet

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:06:59 +0000

This is a slight change of the topic, but there is a company call Flat World Knowledge http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/minisite/ If successfull will do away with the text book scams on campus.

Recently UT-Austin announced they will go with digital textbook this spring (article in the Chronicle somewhere).

If you can somehow post reading on students facebook pages we can get students to read.

By: David

David — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:57:36 +0000

I went to high school from 99-03 and we were permitted to take our textbooks anywhere we liked. The issue prof Wesch raises is a serious one, but it is also a regional issue. This restricted access to books obviously is contingent upon the resources of the school/school system in question.

Unlike some other respondents, I feel that paperbound textbooks are an incredibly powerful medium for transmitting information and has varoius benefits over digital media. For one thing, you’re probably more focused when reading an article in your hands than on a screen: computers tempt us with all sorts of distractions, from internet sites like digg, youtube and facebook, to static computer objects like video games and tv shows.

More importantly though, books give us a completely different interaction with the text, a more personal interaction. You can flip back and forth between far apart sections more easily to compare ideas, underline, highlight, write in the margins, bookmark with descriptive post-its….There’s a huge differnce between turning a page and scrolling down.

I had a professor in college who would assign most of our reading as articles he published online as pdfs: You bet your ass i printed out and read on paper every last one.

By: vangahh

vangahh — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:42:40 +0000

Our school district purchases a set of textbooks for classroom use and each student is issued a textbook to keep at home. Students can also arrange to receive a second set of books if their custody arrangement requires them to spend weeknights at different homes.

Access to books is not the issue for many students (especially college bound). Sadly, many students just don’t read and are surprisingly hostile towards its value. They view reading and the “book thing” as passe. The notable exception in recent years has been Harry Potter because he’s perceived as “cool” and all their friends read the books and saw the movies.

By: fingers

fingers — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:17:21 +0000

This does not happen in my inner city high school. We encourage students to take home their books. I tell my kids to take them home and keep them home (English class) because there is a class set in the classroom and there’s no need to carry it back and forth.

I teach freshmen.

By: surplus

surplus — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:14:12 +0000

I graduate from high school in 2001 and all of the books that we needed were given to us. We were able to check out and take home our math, history, English etc books. Except for the English books we were required to make slip covers for them to prevent wear. For the biology books which were enormous we were each given a book to take home and there was a set kept at school for in class work so we didn’t have to haul the book to school and back, however there was only one classroom set so they had to stagger the days we used them in class so that we didn’t have two classes trying to use them at the same time. Occasionally for English class we had to buy our own copies of the books we were reading because the school didn’t have enough copies for everyone.