It's difficult for me to understand the need for speed in introducing technology so rapidly into multiple grade levels. Why not start with teachers who really love the idea and then let them become the trainers? One really pertinent argument is that textbooks are too big and backpacks weight 30 pounds or more. I've argued about the cost, size, weight, contents, ancillary materials and just plan absurdity of ritualistically buying textbooks when so little changes about them.
Junior editors must really break a sweat to be sure that each state's testing program is properly followed throughout the text. (Bet they love the Common Core!) The publishers offer pacing guides,test prep, e-books, interactive CD's, multicultural, translated, multi-leveled materials and more to entice a state into approving the series. Then each district gets a turn at the narrowed-down selection of publishers.
Now various companies have produced entire educational programs for IPads. You'll find interesting information about IPads and the programs on them in the two links I provided:
Please read the comments for these articles because although some are crude (especially in the second one), they bring up the range of issues related to technology in the classroom.
When I taught, I advocated for a binder set-up for the TE. New chapters could be clipped in to the teacher's edition and the new pages could be downloaded for a small fee and the teachers could produce an inexpensive class set. Take a look at your old and new books - very little changes except for the last chapters. If you invest in the cloth book covers and keep a class set so students don't have to drag their book to your class, your books will stay in good to perfect condition for many years. I only assign homework that I'm willing to do myself so chapter readings were done in class.
I have been on many text-book selection committees, committees when parents have tried to have a particular book banned from the library, gifted and talented selection committees at the school and district level. I have been one of two people to write the Eighth-grade Language Arts Gifted & Talented Curriculum and then present it to a committee. I have served on so many committees both in my school and in my community that I am allowed to tell the following joke: God put together a committee to produce a horse and they made ... a camel!
Be it textbook, technology or testing it's about the money and these companies are making bundles. The Gates Foundation found that the teacher is the single most important factor in student learning and I will add this caveat - IN THE CLASSROOM!!
That is why their foundation has spent hours filming, researching and identifying the traits of successful teachers. So with or without IPads or computers - a good teachers is a good teacher. One clever person wrote in the comment section that with all the lack of parenting skills that money would be better spent helping single moms. The comment sections, however, reveal a deeper problem about finding solutions to the many problems that face our country.
We are becoming a nation of haters. We are in danger of mind gridlock because schools are highly politicized and subject to the whims of a few as described in one of my favorite YA science fiction collections: http://www.amazon.com/2041-12-Stories-About-Future-Yolen/dp/0440218985. The collection of short stories contains one related to censorship: MUCH ADO ABOUT [CENSORED] by Connie Willis. I used the book when it first came out in 1991 and every year until I retired in 2005, to illustrate what could happen. Sadly, it seems that it may not be an unrealistic point of view.
I also have a link to an interview with Jane Yolen, who put the collection together. She has a lot to say about the effects of the change in YA writing and publishing and that children are not really going to be life-long readers if we keep headed in the direction we are pursuing now: http://www.advunderground.com/interviews/2007/yolen0207.php
Hearing from teachers who have used the technology would be wonderful. Please comment or e-mail me at jjane359@gmai.com . Right now, I'm searching for the Pizza Assessment so you can have it and I don't want to have to recreate it. As I remember, it was difficult to produce the first time around. Give me until next Monday, and if I haven't dug it up - I will put it together for you.
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