Apple’s new textbook approach
Apple’s new textbook announcement looks pretty interesting and I blogged a little about it, and some of my reservations, here. As I say, even thought I write an English textbook, I don’t think English teachers are as reliant on textbooks as many other subjects seem to be. Still, it was nice for this video to open up with an English teacher talking, even though I don’t think I saw any examples of an English text book in the video.
Old Tech
Just about to head off to the Apple site to hear what they have to say about the ‘textbook revolution’, iBooks 2 and all that. The video from the presentation is here and no doubt I’ll blog about all that sometime soon.
Meanwhile, I just received a pile of author copies of the new Issues Book and am getting fired up for the teaching year ahead. Sometimes, old-school technology can work too! I love the colours this year too!.
The Post-PC era?
Like a lot of educators I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future technology needs of students (and teacher) and whether Ipads or Ipad-style devices are likely to be the answer.
They’re relatively inexpensive ($529), remarkably versatile, instant-on, lightweight, with 10 hour or battery life.
On the other hand, despite the increasingly sophisticated and purpose-built apps available for note-taking and writing, writing anything longer than a paragraph with a built-in keyboard is painful.
Or is that just me? When I see students at school texting away with two fingers at a bizillion miles per hour, perhaps it’s just MY limitation and MY yearning for a full-size keyboard that’s holding me back.
I still see these tablets (and I love my Ipad and use it every day) as an adjunct to a computer, something you plug in to another, more powerful device. With a keyboard. Although, the latest Apple Iphone, and it’s giant strides towards real and authentic voice recognition, might even change that context in the future.
One thing I am surer than ever about is that, with these devices priced as they are, and the centrality of the technology to the world, ideas and lives of our students, it’s harder than ever for schools and systems to dodge their responsibility in both providing them, and using them in high-stakes teaching, learning and assessment.
Teaching Paperless
It was a nice moment right at the end of the year this year with my Literature class. It was the second last lesson I think and we were sitting around talking about what they felt they needed to know in terms of any unanswered questions. I’d found a few online quizes and tests on Emma, Hamlet and Frankenstein and I’d put together my own little quiz on Gwen Harwood as a PowerPoint, just for fun really, and to confirm to them that they did indeed know these texts pretty well.
But when I asked them to get out a piece of paper for the quiz, they refused. After a year of teaching paperless they weren’t going to go backwards in the last lesson. So, rather than fire up the laptops, the phones came out and they wrote down their quiz answers. I’d been telling them about our paperless experiment but that was ages ago, so it was nice they remembered, and wanted to end the year in that fashion.
Blogging with the iPad
With more and more schools beginning to see the potential of the iPad, I’ve been thinking a bit about what apps you would give students in English: what would students take notes on? Do mind maps on? Organize their homework and schedule? For example, I’m blogging this with the official wordpress app, but Blogsy is also pretty powerful.
Well, at least that’s my excuse for the 206 apps I’ve tried so far, the vast majority coming from the ‘productivity’ section of the itunes store. I’ll blog a bit from now on about my favorites over the next few months.
Podcasting with Garageband
Well, I plugged the Logitech USB microphone into the Ipad and guess what, it worked! Lit up like a Christmas tree and allowed me to improve the quality of the audio in a lot. So, I was playing around with Garageband as a tool for podcasting and using the Ipad to do it, rather than using Audacity on the PC.
Of course I spent way too much time putting together and low and funky backing track for my Alice Munro Literature podcast. But, you do that!
Australian content?
I was thinking after I posted yesterday about that world literature site, and the lack of Australian content there. What should be there do you think? What Australian texts could / should sit alongside the classics that are there? I remember one olde school English teacher telling me quite happily that there was no such thing as Australian literature; I didn’t agree, forcefully! But what Australian text would you put up there?
Invitation to World Literature
This looks like a great resource, that would probably best suit senior Literature classes, incorporating audio and video and text on some of the most famous works of world literature. For me, the list is a bit eclectic; I think only one of the thirteen has ever been on a Victorian VCE Literature course, but perhaps that’s the point. Definitely worth exploring!
Ipad
Well, I have the shiny new device in my eager and impatient hands, just in time to spend some time over the term break getting to know this device and figuring out whether it has real application for classrooms. So far, so fun.
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