When are the classrooms going to be all digital! That would have been a naive question even a while back, when it would have been in the realm of the science fiction. But not any more. just look at the proliferation of the ereaders! That is able to give you an equivalent experience to book reading. So if the contents that are similar in quality come cheaper then the choice would swing to the readers. text books already cost quite a lot, anywhere from $50 to $100 or more. EBooks on the other hand costs much less. This year for the first time on-line sales of eBooks have exceeded the on=line sale of printed books! So, digital media is certainly coming.
Then there are the tablets with book reading apps on them. These have the potential of a lot of value add compared to a printed book. Just consider one aspect, the illustrations! In the printed books they are static and takes a while to derive complete meaning out of a chart or a graph or interdependence of events indicated on the illustrations. Not so on the tablets, the illustrations are live, in color and could be animated to show any dependencies easily. Then if you consider the dimension video can add to the learning experience, then it is not difficult to guess which way the future textbooks should go.
It is heartening to see MLTI (Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative) being taken up for schools i the state of Maine in the US towards this goal. Let's watch what they are up to!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment