THIS IS
A PRESENT, YOU CAN TAKE IT OR YOU CAN LEAVE IT, IT'S UP TO YOU. ;)
To start with the weekly role, I would
like to give you an extra "concept" or I better say "idea"
that I have found sailing on the net. It is a web site about free
resources for education, yes you've heard well, free resources for
education where you can log in for FREE and choose whatever you think is
good for preparing your teaching lessons. Please don't hesitate to click on the
link below and find out more about such interesting site.
CK-12 provides open-source content and
technology tools to help teachers provide learning opportunities for students
globally. Free access to high-quality, customizable educational content
in multiple modalities suited to multiple student learning
styles and levels will allow teachers, students and others to innovate and
experiment with new models of learning. CK-12 helps students and teachers alike
by enabling rapid customization and experimentation of
teaching and learning styles.
We need to go from today’s “fixed time,
variable learning” to a “variable time, fixed learning” model or even
better, “maximum capability learning” within a teacher’s constraints of
standards compliance and other administrative rules in their region. This
new model adapts to each student level, style, and circumstance while
leveraging new digital tools to answer the most fundamental questions: “What
can digitization do for the textbook?” and “What can digitization
do for learning?” instead of the more mundane “How can the textbook become
digital?”. Leveraging these new tools to multiply and enhance learning
resources (such as video, simulations, and peer learning) is key to CK-12’s
mission. CK-12’s goal is to provide tools that can help increase student
learning through engagement, and to provide more universal access to
learning and learning content, irrespective of educational resources available
for a student or region. Additionally, CK-12 aims to reduce the impact of
educational resources needed (by teachers or by classrooms) by leveraging good
teachers, and when teachers are poor, burned out or not available, CK-12 will
provide direct access to students for their own learning.
NOW LET'S DO OUR DUTIES FOR THIS WEEK.
After a while thinking and thinking and
thinking and thinking and thinking....OMG!!! What a thought! Ok let's be
serious. After a while thinking on mi 5 concepts for this week, I've
got to the conclusion that I wanted to tell the idea of "Dark side of
textbooks" by using concepts that by isolating then you can even
appreciate de "Clear side of textbooks" but when you are putting then
all together you can see the real truth.
We'll do it by steps, first one: The
definition provided by Cambridge Dictionary.
1-GOVERNMENT: The group of people who
officially controls a country
Ok. Now think about the 5 concepts and try
to find out something negative....................have you fond
something?.......... I don't think so............ these terms separately are
harmless but, what happen if we put them all together?
Have a look...
TheGOVERNMENTas a group of people, who officially
control the country, encourages theMARKETas this is the engine of the economy
and is formed by people who might want to buy or
trade something in a particular context. In the other hand there is
thePUBLISHERwho are organization that publishes
text or music, this organizations depend of the marker to raise their incomes
and for that reason they embed on theirBOOKSproductions a politicalBIAS (sesgos)in order to satisfy the government
interest and also to get benefits and good position on the market. as markets
are controlled in some part by the government.
Now probably you have a mess in your mind...
Find out below a very simple mathematical calculation to solve this tricky
conclusion.
GOVERNMENT+MARKET+PUBLISHER+BIAS+BOOKS= The dark side of textbooks
This week we have to look for information about “The
dark side of text books” and make the fable “The fall hive honey” each of us
have made a different part:
-Feli: she has looked for information about “The
broken market” and she has translated the fable into English.
-Rocío: she has to look information about “New
editions and the uses book market” and make the introduction explaining why we
have chosen the fable.
-Cristian: he has looked for information about “Price
disolure” and like Rocío explains why we have chosen the fable.
-María: she has to make the “Disadvantages of text
books” and a summarize about the fable explaining what is the meaning of each
character.
-Rosana: she has looked for information about “Advantages of
using new technologies in class” and she has rewritten the fable in Spanish to
improve it.
-Fernando:
he has written the fable the first time, has painted the drawings, made the
questions and answers in “Kahoot” for the presentation in class for our
classmates and he will present it tomorrow in class.
-Raquel
(me): I have looked for extra information and I have found a document : “The
future of the books”, and a video very
interesting about a high school without
text books and finally I have made the drawings for the fable and I have helped
to Fernando to paint them.
Now
my experience this week as facilitator has been stressed, tired and it has been
difficult in the sense that I have to make that everyone is in agreement about
the work and with all the ideas of the group, organize all the parts and controlling
that everything is going well. A part from that it has been a good experience
and I think that we have made a good job because all of us have been giving
ideas for the fable and how we could to explain it and how we could present it,
I am very proud for them and for their job. And I hope that they have been
comfortable with me.
This
week has touched me again with Feli be journalist but I have focused my work to
find more blogs related to textbooks, I mentioned two of our fellow blogs which
I found very interesting and also other blogs I've found Internet. What I have
called more attention is that most blogs are set on how much they cost the
books, rather than the quality of its content, the publishing
business, almost all blogs focus on how to save students money, which is also
important, but it feels that only is important the money.
Blogs class:
We
like a lot their explain about dark sides of textbooks, we think that it is
better clear and it is easy to understand.
In
this blog, specially in this post explain the advantages and disadvantages of
traditional publishingand what
those things might mean for authors.That is, they are agree with the
publication of textbooks and reflect very clearly the business there are
with publishers and authors of books and the most important
thing for them is money.
In
this blog explaindigital
textbooks advantages and disadvantages, they explain in a few words advantages
and disadvantages without getting in favor of any of the parts, it is a
informative post.
Othersinteresting references for items related:
Rockwell,
M. 2010. Words Aren't Cheap. Community College Journal, 81(5),
57-61. Retreived Septermeber, 11, 2011 from Proquest Computer. (Proquest
ID 2338755661)
Robinson,
S. (2010) Students Use of an Online Textbook: Even if it's Free, will they buy
it?Allied Academics International Conference. Academy of
Educational Leadership.Proceedings, 15(1),
44-50. Retreived Sepetember, 11, 2011 from Proquest Computing.
(Proquest ID 2067209491)
In
this blog the autor explain the Dark Side of E-Books.
On
the other hand our work this week has been to find information about textbooks,
its use, its validity, its price, etc.. And with all that information to
perform an activity. We have chosen to make a fable which we have entitled
"The hive fall," it told the story of some bees and ants, but you
will have to read it to give us your opinion;). in the fable by insects try to
explain the need for some teachers to use a textbook alone. It has been a very
difficult week but we've all put our effort to help our star Fernando to make
the fable.
Making of about our work this week:
The beginning of the week:
We working very hard about The dark sides of text books!
But we were surprised by the pleasant visit of Mercedes Ruiz, She is a teacher of life, and we had great fun learning from it like this:
She is Mercedes Ruiz you can follow her in twitter @londones
- 1. The teacher’s professionalism
is limited to their capability to search solutions to the problems on the book.
- 2. Textbooks have
lots of problems.
- 3. Children read
those books as they were a bible, so they think that they should believe all of
what they are reading.
- 4. They suppose a
great economic cost. The editorials have earned 900 million euros, and also it produces
a big waste as paper for the world.
- 5. Textbooks have
a lack of contents.
- 6. They have mistakes
on the pages.
- 7. Textbooks are a
business; editorials decide the content of textbooks influenced on the government
politics, so teacher lose their autonomy.
- 8. Textbooks contain
lots of ideas that we transmit to our students in order to make perfect
students, without having in mind the student´s diversity in the classroom.
2.- Advantages of using new technologies in class.
As we have been able to perceive, Technology is the
future, so since children, teachers must guide their education on it. They need
learning the skills to know how to get on with them. Moreover, nowadays we are
in a globalized world where there are a lot of cultural factors that can affect
on learning, so children need to have a broad range of experiences to they can
know every cultures.
Technology allows us it. Thank for technology, the
access at the culture is free and fast. We can find innumerable information son
you are not reducing your knowledge at all. Moreover, it is more flexible, in
other words, a personalized learning. Given that it can be adapted at level of
each student so these kinds of things assist the inclusion.
The use of technology in the classroom facilitate the
class´ dynamic we can see it when teachers use whiteboard, tablets, audiovisual
tools, apps, etc. when you use it, you have more liberty due to the lack of
some impediments, so your creativity, autonomy, critical thinking and maturity
will be developed faster and before.
For example, if we use the whiteboard to teach maps,
and besides we use an application that it allows moving maps, watching it on 3D,
children will learn maps at the funniest and most interesting way.
Other example, if children learn water cycles by an
app that allows constant interaction between children and the concepts, their
learning will be more effective, direct, lively and productive. Moreover, it
could be a broad range of exercise that children are doing according their
cognitive learning and their acquisition of the contents.
Technology let us, among other things, to incorporate
new elements which can do our learning more productive, funny and interesting. So
it is so necessary that we use it, we must not reduce our opportunity to learn
in a text book.
3.- The broken market.
The wide market of textbook does not operate in a similar manner for all
the consumers. For instance, the students who are selected consumers are not
able to select the product; in addition the faculty or teachers do not buy the
product, therefore they are not able to fix prices with publishers, and that is the main reason why the named
publishers increase the prices dramatically. Therefore this is the main reason
why the prices are overrated.
The Broken Market term appeared in the James Koch analysis, he is an
economist and he was asked from the behalf of the Advisory Committee on Student
Financial Assistance to research in this tendency.
The lack of competition is due to the fact that in the last decades the
amount of companies that were betting on text books have been increasingly
dwindled, so that there are not as much competition as it used to be time ago.
To settle nowadays a textbook company requires a huge investment, and that
fact, due to the actual crisis, keep new candidates out of the competence. As
we can see, lately the cost of school books is a rip off money, and added to
the fact that there are big unemployment rates, so less income entering into
the houses, the effort made by parents is as terrific, as well as sad. Not only
because they have to renounce to creating a good life quality for the whole
family, in order to provide their children with cultural capital which is the
best investment we as parents can do, but also the sad part of it, is because
investing more money that they did before buying textbooks, they have at the
same time to take off some of the extra activities of their children, such as
particular classes of English, as well as music, artistic, sports among others.
But parents know that the pursue to success for their kids depends mainly on
these textbooks, so as sadly as it might seem, in a democratic country they are
obliged to buy them and make these handful of companies richer.
As students grow and are getting aware of the problem they come out with
new strategies such as purchasing their assigned materials in spite of the fact
of the concern that their grades will provide them, so in a survey made among
teenagers students 65% of them prefer to copy the books because they said that
books were far too expensive. They also know that not buying them can help them
to pass the grade, but they
did though.
And 82% said that they will master the grades as long as they are
provided with new strategies such as if the textbooks were available free
online, and buy a hard copy were up to the students. This fact with avoid that
textbook companies were as prompt as they are now to raise their percentage in
their social capital with such asexorbitant pricesas they make now.
Even though there are a lot of steps carried out to avoid the high costs
in the marketplace and the exclusiveness of textbooks, high textbook prices
will still continued to harm students economy unless the new editions of school
and college textbooks dwindle.
Many students often buy books used for a especial reason, which are
much cheaper than a new book, selling used books has become commonplace among
students especially in these times of crisis, a used book has the same use a
new book costs less money and contributes to the recycling of paper. Most times
publishers take to market new editions of the same book but without the aim of
improving it, for economic reasons, that
is, often the new edition of a book is 80 % the same as the previous edition
only 3 years ago, in this fact is to increase or maintain high prices have the
books. In this way a business is created with a very important resource for
students as they need to use books and publishers often create agreements with
the government to sell their books. On the other hand there are electronic
books that today are common, but they also have their disadvantages , yes they
are cheaper than physical books , but once completed they can not use or can
not be sold. Therefore the used book sale and reuse of books is an outlet for
many students who need money (and sell books that wont use more) or theuy do
not have much money to buy books and materials (buying used books or that is
the same second hand books). Textbooks must be produced and priced to be as
cheap as possible without sacrificing educational value.New editions of
textbooks should occur only when educationally necessary .Editors should
provide more information on the price of each book, the expected duration of
stay in the market and the differences in the substance of issues
anteriores.los studiangtes should have easy access to all products lnformation
Publisher , inexpensive formats , etc .All books should be available at a real
low cost edition that has a similar content in a format low cost . Information
on these options should be easily acceso.Los governments, schools and
universities should give preference to the lower cost options when choosing
their books. There must be many ways for students to access books used,
including rental programs , and bookswaps online bookstore buyback .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook - New editions and the used book market
5.- Price disclosure.
If there is a solution why we let the publisher do whatever they do? We have Founf on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook something interesting about price diclosure, I didn't know before about this kind of regulations but I didn't know neither that publishers don't care about rules. Have a look below and get your own opinnion.
The problem of
high textbook prices is linked to the economics of the
market, requiring publishers to disclose textbook prices to faculty is a
solution pursued by a number of legislatures.By inserting price into sales
interactions, this regulation will supposedly make the economic forces operate
more normally.
No data suggests that this
is in fact true. However, The Student PIRGs have found that publishers actively
withhold pricing information from faculty, making it difficult to obtain. Their
most recent study found that 77% of faculty say publisher sales representatives
do not volunteer prices, and only 40% got an answer when they directly asked.
Furthermore, the study found that 23% of faculty rated publisher websites as
“informative and easy to use” and less than half said they typically listed the
price.
Another nice web to contrast the information abobe about price disclosure is
http://www.studentpirgs.org/resources/textbook-price-disclosure-law Where you can find few more interesting things.
"Price disclosure. Publishers are required to disclose prices and revision information when marketing textbooks to professors. This law helps counteract the "broken market" at the root of high textbook prices by providing all of the information professors need to identify and consider lower cost options."
6.- “The future of the books”.
I have found a pdf where Jordi Adell and Lolanda
Bernabé explained the future of text books, here I give you a summarize about
this document and the link.
The text book is a potent regulator in the work of a
teacher and a big business for publishers that have influence in the educative
politics of the governments. The innovation, the change and the improvement quality,
suggest find theoretical and practical alternatives in the development of the
curriculum. Nowadays the technological problem is social economic and legal.
The new technologies are questioning the manner who text books are produced,
distributed, market and used actually. A change in the material of the books
could end with the model of the actual business.
Computers and internet, each day are more frequently
at schools and houses “computerize the education”. Persons who follow the
technology said that in each desk must have a computer and each house the same.
Replace totally with internet text books.
And technology has a role very important for teacher:
incorporates means of audio, video, develops projects…
To sum up, new technologies are our future and it will
be used in our futures classrooms.
