Treasure Chest of Thoughts

Open content vs. traditional textbooks.  A cheap idea.  Go green! 

Sounds so at first, but….

In “Educators Assess ‘Open Content’ Movement,” the author Andrew Trotter reports on teachers using wikis on which they and their students post content for their classes because their textbooks are so outdated that students are not receiving even an adequate education.

While I respect what Trotter has to say, he could have just as easily taken an entirely different slant on this topic.

So here goes…

According to the article, teachers are using wikis (and they are a grand tool!)and anything else they can get their hands on (free or not….copyrighted or not) because school districts are NOT utilizing textbook money to replace books that, in my case, are literally falling apart, even the duck tape no longer keeps the books bound!

This method of no longer purchasing textbooks does save money while it costs teachers endless hours of searching, reading, printing, copying, and binding…or placing these texts when allowable on wikis…so that their students still receive a quality education.

Yes, you are sensing an underlying layer of anger here.

Until a few years ago, I have always had an anthology from which to pull my literary units that I, of course, also enhanced with outside sources.  This past year I felt like a first-year teacher…one without a textbook.  It was not a pleasant experience, and one I dread repeating.  Thus, I am spending hours of my summer reading as I attempt to find the sources to supplement…no, wrong word…as I attempt to find the sources to further create the literary units I started last year.

Also nowhere in Trotter’s article did he acknowledge what to do about the shortage of computers in schools and in many homes.

I am blessed to have ten computers in my room and frequent use to a larger student lab…but the word is blessed, for I realize that many schools do not have these opportunities.

With this in mind, I am ever-learning how to utilize techie tools so that my students can use these computers even more.  To learn these, though, I am either self-taught or lean heavily (thanks Lisa at JustRead!) on peers for continued support.

Thus having said this, I will preach copyright to my students, try not to think about it when choosing texts, and not-save-money as I print literally thousands of pages a year to provide my students with adequate material and a hopefully more than adequate education.