Educational Technology by Mathew Needleman

Who Needs Textbooks?

In response to my post, Five Reasons Why We’re Not Integrating Technology in Schools, Michelle Bourgeois offers Five Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Integrate Textbooks in School.

Laura Milligan goes one step further and offers 100+ Resources for Teaching Without Textbooks.

Even though I think it’s the wrong argument to pit books against computers because we need both, the arguments are compelling and there is much to be said for some technology taking the place of printed matter in classrooms.

4 thoughts on “Who Needs Textbooks?”

  1. Kia ora Mathew

    I concur. I believe we need both.

    What fascinates me about this whole discussion is that I seldom learn of any opinion on the net that has been gathered from the young learners.

    As it happens, I teach hundreds of them every day. These learners are distance students. Some are elearners. The interesting thing that I bring here is that, given the choice, most of them would choose the book. Fact.

    I say most. Of course we will find many who just love to get online. It would be strange if we didn’t. But when it comes to the so-called learner-centreness, student-centred-learning, personalised-learning, whatever-is-your-poison, we may be surprised to find a significant component in those that is in favour of learning from books. That’s been my experience when asking students in my cohorts over the last few years, and more than just being significant, it is the major portion.

    So it’s not just the way the content is being offered, or the best way to do that. When it comes to the learners’ choices, I feel there may be a need to consider those too.

    Catchya later
    from Middle-earth

  2. Thanks Ken for your points. Perhaps we should be arguing for project based learning and then choosing the internet, computers, books, or other materials as needed to complete the task at hand.

  3. Kia ora Mathew

    I like your suggestion of using the technology that best fits the need. I’ve no doubt that the time will come when the book may be superceded, but the technology isn’t there yet.

    There is, of course, the parallel debate about the use of paper. This is all pioneer stuff and is all very fascinating in theory.

    Getting rid of paper altogether seems to be the main thrust of some arguments. It could stand a bit of experimentation though my gut feeling is that it may not be as smooth as others may like to think it would be.

    From a research point of view, I often wonder what the goal is. Is it to find a way to best use learning resources (of any type) or is it to find a way of not using paper (notepads or books)?

    While I personally can quite happily get by without using paper, notepads or books, I’ve been educated to the level where I can think through all the methods (I’m familiar with) that I can put to use without using paper.

    Student literacy need is another untested area – I wont’ go up that path 🙂

    Catchya later

Comments are closed.