The End of the Textbook? ... as we know it

[Fred Bartels]

I watched Apple's webcast about the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software yesterday. Lots of interesting new features in the API, but one thing in particular caused me to think about textbooks; the upcoming Within Application purchasing option for iPhone apps. Apple said many iPhone application developers had been asking for this feature. The best example they used to illustrate how this works involved a city guide application. Up till now if you were developing a city guide application you would need to sell either one guide for all cities that you think your users might be visiting, or a separate guide for each city. With the new approach you can develop one city guide application and within that application sell modules for cities of interest to individual users.

On the hardware front the evidence is quite strong that Apple is making a touch screen device with a 10" diagonal screen. (It has been confirmed by a number of sources that Apple has placed a large order with a Taiwanese company for these screens.) I would guess that this device will be running some version of the iPhone/iTouch software and with it one will be able to purchase software from the App Store.

Now think about your use of textbooks. How often do you not cover all the chapters in textbooks you are using? How often do you really only want certain chapters in a textbook? Remember buying record albums and compact disks? Remember how often you really only liked/wanted a few tracks but you had to purchase the entire album/CD?

At this point I'm guessing you may have some thoughts occurring to you.

Thoughts like:

•I could put together my own play list... oops, I mean put together my own "textbook" from the best "chapters" available in the App Store.
•These "chapters" could include audio and video files, little simulations, interactive assessments, etc..
•Our students might no longer need to be loaded down like sherpas with their textbook packed backpacks.

Now let's take this a step further. In the iPhone 3.0 software Apple has made it much easier for developers to interact with external devices; things like blood glucose readers. Communication with these devices can be done wirelessly via Bluetooth. Imagine if some sort of small EKG type device could be developed that would monitor brain activity at some level. A student settling down to do some reading from their Apple netbook ('iBook' again perhaps?) could put on this device and their computer would be monitoring them as they read. If the device picked up that their attention was wandering the netbook could suggest a break or an alternative approach to presenting the information? Imagine a dialog box like this popping up... "You appear to be drifting a bit Fred. Would you like to try the auditory learner approach to this topic?"

I'm curious what others think? Did I just have too much coffee this morning? :-)

Fred

[Matt Montagne]

I think this is one more step in the direction of wide acceptance of digital textbooks/reference books.

Among the many compelling ideas that you present, I'd like to add that digital text can be modified and customized in a way that analogue texts can't. See the video from Science Leadership Academy that demetri embedded the other day...it speaks to the high degree of customization that can happen with digi-texts:

http://isenet.ning.com/video/joes-nonnetbook

Great conversation starter here, Fred.

[Jim Heynderickx]

Good post, Fred.

From a larger view, I hope that digital textbooks in the are a addition and not a complete replacement of course books. I have no love of text books, but I also hope our students are "multi-modal" in their ability to access and use information. I've heard some reports that students out of college can be too dependent on digial resources and tools, for example, and possibly ineffective in situations when those tools aren't available.

If I remember correctly, one of the first uses of hypertext was in Boeing 747 digital service manuals, so that engineers could carry 1,000s of pages and diagrams around digitally, and hyperlink between the related systems as they serviced the aircraft. Thus, the idea of digital resource books isn't very new at all.

[Charles Palmer]

Great reflection Fred.

I've been thinking about this for a few years as well. Primarily how will the Textbook of the Future and the Classroom of the Future improve the delivery of knowledge and the approach to learning.

I love the idea of a device that is aware of the users attention (could use eye tracking software instead of a separate device) as well as being aware of it's location. Imagine a student crosses the threshold of their classroom and their homework assignment is automatically uploaded to the LMS, while the next reading, assignment, class outline, slides, and related links are download to the device. The system could also monitor how long each student took to complete the reading, how many breaks were needed, etc... and assess the class median to figure out how any people are 'getting it'. Could be a valuable tool for determining the course progress and instructor assessment.

We (like a number of educational and corporate learning developers) are working on developing reusable learning objects/modules for use across multiple disciplines. Exactly like Fred described with book chapters, except these RLO's would be more granular than a chapter. We envision an instructor needing to teach a concept and using our objects (developed to address Pennsylvania Standards for now) to construct their course. The modules are multi-modal from slides, to video and animation, to interactive environments - based on the type of content being presented and the level of interaction needed. A discussion on gravity and mass could lead to a little game where you derive the distance of objects on to a virtual landscape. Likewise a writing assignment on the civil war could be researched using synthetic interview technology where the student could 'interview' prominent figures (both dead and alive) on the subject.

There is a lot of discussion on this matter as well as an upcoming conference (warning: shameless plug) taking place at Harrisburg University this summer. Check out http://www.leef2009.net for more details.