There are several ways to fight textbook inflation in the classroom. 1) Used textbooks. This, of course, only works if the content being taught hasn't changed. In the fast-paced world of digital media, textbooks have to keep up with new software. 2) Look for inexpensive textbooks for the subject. Works great if the content is equivalent. Often it isn't. 3) Stop teaching from textbooks.
I'm a proponent of the last. Sometimes it's a successful methodology; sometimes it isn't.
Does anyone read anymore? Of course they do. They just don't read the way previous generations did. Didn't read the assignment? "Too much to read in too little time," is a major excuse. Okay, the world is moving faster today than yesterday, but there's still time for a visit to MySpace or to watch "The Game."
No, the problem is most textbooks are boring. I know. I've helped write one. There are either too many words that take forever to get to the point or the lessons are aimed at the least-common-denominator student. And, for the most part, they're verbal rather than visual.
One thing we ought to have learned as teachers is that students each have their own preferred learning style... Active/reflective; Sensing/intuitive... Visual/Verbal... Sequential/Global. Textbooks on the other hand are... the same. And they just sit there.
Students, meanwhile, have been influenced by technology and their environment. Played a video game lately? Moves faster than a textbook, doesn't it? Education and learning consultant Marc Prensky says it with more words: "Because schools haven't adapted to the world their students know and live in, they simply get bored in the classroom. They tune out."
Prensky advocates using games as a teaching tool. The field of "serious games" is expanding rapidly because of this interest. But if you don't have games you can use as a teaching tool, what can you do?
Skip the textbook. Make up your own curriculum. Create your own handouts. More work? Yep. More success in the classroom? Maybe.
1 comment:
Every time I go to the campus bookstore I ask myself "Why aren't these book digital yet." I feel like I am the one missing something, especially when I spend $200 on a book that the class doesn't even cover half of and then I am offered $35 for buyback. On top of that I have to take classes that make me a "well-rounded student." I am taking Principles of Marketing and Customer Service this quarter and all I am doing for every assignment is regurgitating the book back, how is that making me a well-rounded student? The Anthropology of YouTube video that you had us watch was absolutely amazing so amazing in fact I showed it to friends and actually watched it with my wife. I have never grabbed my text book and exclaimed "Honey you have to read this paragraph!" To be honest the driving force to even putting up with these other courses is the fact that I will get more DMD if I keep doing well. Kathleen teaching Photography, or Michael teaching me how to draw, are the only reasons I put up with Customer Service or any other boring class.
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