In a Digital Future, Are Textbooks History?

A few years back, while buying a science textbook for my daughter's high school chemistry class, I noticed that her $180 textbook also came in a relatively cheaper electronic version. My wife, who loves her Kindle, had suggested that we solve the problem of lugging too many heavy textbooks and save some money by buying digital textbooks.   Are we are at the leading edge of a fundamental change in educational technology?

In the United States, textbooks are a $14 billion market, about evenly divided between the K-12 segment and the college segment.  This market is on the verge of being disrupted.  The web and digital media disintermediate knowledge and shatter historical monopolies on information, communication, and learning. They are a classic example of what Clayton Christensen, currently dean of the Harvard Business School, termed "disruptive technology" in his prescient first book, The Innovator's Dilemma.

Schools and schooling are moving online. More schools and increasing numbers of teacher are creating their own instructional materials.  They make PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, and YouTube videos and post them to the web. Neeru Khosla's CK-12 Foundation, which creates digital textbooks from free, digital media, has submitted several of its "flexbooks" for adoption by the state of California, which the department of education hopes might save millions of dollars. 

I don’t use textbooks.  All my lessons are hands-on, inquiry science where we are either doing an experiment or reflecting on and creating meaning for an experiment that we have just done.  We experiment, we talk, we write.  I tell my students that our textbook is the one they create in their science notebooks. 

In the past, I kept some sample textbooks to look something up.  Now I use trusted sites on the web to look things up.  For ideas, I might use the web or some creative books, such as Culinary Reactions, a great book on food chemistry by Simon Field, to plan a lesson.  But no textbooks.  Move over McGraw-Hill and give Gutenberg the news.

 

A Day at the Maker Faire

Yesterday I took two of my students to our local Maker Faire and we had a great time.  In case you are unfamiliar with these events, they were started in 2006 in San Mateo, California, by Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make Magazine, as a celebration of  “arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset."  The Faire fondly refers to itself as “the biggest Show-and-Tell on earth.”   Make Magazine is a key publication of the Maker culture, a major movement intersecting with tinkering, hacking, and Do-It-Yourself.

We spent four hours just wandering around, looking at whatever caught our eye.  We all wanted to see the giant Mouse Trap gizmo designed and built by Mark Perez and we got to the barrier over 15 minutes early.  It was a giant Rube Goldberg device at least two stories high that was modeled after the old Mouse Trap game.  A gear wheel would release a hammer that start a bowling ball down a flight of stairs and so forth, ultimately with a two-ton safe crashing down on an old BMW.  That was pretty dramatic!

We made LED greeting cards at the Chibitronics booth, which delighted my students.  I really like how their idea of using copper tape and flat watch batteries has made simple electric circuits much easier and more accessible for students to make more electrical projects.  I get the same effect as copper tape by using aluminum foil cut in strips and backed by transparent sticky tape.  We also visited the booth of John Collins, The Paper Airplane Guy, and made our versions of his models.  The booth minders looked horrified at our mods but within the limits of the booth, they seemed to fly as well as those made by others following the “rules”.  We also ran into my friend, Simon Field, a technophile who operates a cool website called “scitoys” with lots of science toys, science projects, and science background.  It’s a treasure trove for teachers and students who like tinkering and awesome science.  We had a great day and now I’m trying to figure out how to use all the new ideas I got.

Southwest Archaeology with Kids

Our 5th graders study the archaeology of the Southwest during the spring semester as part of our integrated studies. As their science teacher for a dozen years, I worked along with my colleagues in Humanities, Math, Art, and Technology to help our students learn about the history and culture of the ancestral Puebloan people. In addition to learning about the daily life and history, the 5th graders learn about the geology of the Southwest and the science of archaeology.    We spend a week at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO, a working archaeological center with a residential education program.  They have an amazing hands-on curriculum to introduce students to archeology and the ancient Puebloans of the Four Corners region.

We begin the week learning about the major periods in history of these Puebloans through handling and learning to classify characteristic artifacts from era.  As you might expect, in learning about another culture and how it developed, our students reflect on our own culture and values.  Students visit archaeological sites from each of the major periods and become familiar with the hallmarks of each.  As a way to study the lifestyles of the Puebloans, our students learn how to make fiber cordage, attempt to start a fire with a bow drill, and practice “hunting “with a rabbit stick and a spear-thrower called and atlatl.  They also get to try on replicas of Puebloan clothing, learn games the Puebloan children played, and weave on an upright loom.  

In the archaeology lab, they learn about techniques used by professional archaeologists to find sites, unearth artifacts and entire villages, classify the artifacts, analyze data to answer questions, and archive the artifacts.  Students see how archaeologists apply geology, chemistry, physics, and biology in their investigations, using simple tools, such as small brushes and dental picks to digital tools and satellite images in modern archaeology. 

 This NYT article, ScientistTries to Connect Migration Dots of Ancient Southwest, discusses University of Colorado archaeologist Steve Lekson's theory of the linkage between Chaco Canyon and Puebloan sites in Mexico as part of his unified theory of Native American population movements. I used this article to help students get a bigger picture of the Puebloan migrations, and some historical context, as well as perspective on one of the current controversial ideas in the science of archaeology.  Our students love this trip and learn so much.  Even after a dozen years, I always find something new.

Coho Salmon Reintroduction

I just got back from a camping trip with my fourth graders in the redwoods of northern California.  One of the highlights of the trip for them and me was that we got to participate in the release of some Coho salmon back into one of the many small creeks in this area.  These salmon were part of a special program by a coalition of groups interested in restoring natural habitats, including governmental, local, and ecology groups.  

These streams used to be full of Coho salmon and then they began disappearing following a misguided effort to “help” the environment.  Water management staff removed the root wads, old logs, and the natural accumulation of woody debris from the creeks and streams, as well as clearing overhanging branches.  This practice depleted the natural pools of water the Coho used for spawning, got rid of the natural cover they used to hide from predators, and the direct sun on the water raised the water temperature above the 60 degrees Fahrenheit needed by the Coho to survive. 

As the salmon vanished, people realized their mistakes and began restoring the woodland creeks to their natural state and developed a program to reintroduce the Coho.  One part of this project was to imprint the Coho smolts that were released on this creek.  Coho salmon hatch in these creeks and spend up to a year in these waters as they develop.  They then swim to the ocean where they typical spend about four years.  Finally, they swim back up stream to the same place they were hatched to spawn.   While we don’t fully understand how they find their homes, we know that the scent of the water and other chemical cues are important. 

We arrived in time to help release a group of smolts that had spent three weeks in a tank of fresh Dutch Bill Creek water imprinting on the bio-chemical cues that will help them find their way back to spawn here in four years or so.  We helped scoop the smolts from the tanks into buckets and formed a bucket brigade to the creek.  After the release, we watched at the salmon smolts began to explore their new home.  Many of my students named this as their most memorable event in a week filled with nature and personal adventures.