Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 2: We Have the Technology
Many schools are looking for alternative digital books such a free open source texts like those found on CK-12.org, which are not interactive, or encouraging teachers to create their own interactive texts. The tools available to create interactive texts for the iPad are available; for a Mac there are iWork Pages and the free iBooks Author. The basic skills need for assembly of an interactive digital text are already mastered by most teachers; create text in a word processor, insert a hyperlink, image or video. In theory teacher created texts are do-able. To make texts media rich teachers will also need to be able to create short videos, screencasts, take photos, record audio and create 3D graphics. These skills are not as wide spread as the others but are not difficult to learn.
If these texts are going to be distributed on the web or made available through iBooks or iTunesU then schools and teachers need to pay particular attention to copyright law and fair use guidelines. This area is widely misunderstood by many educators and any author or creator of digital texts will need to become familiar with these regulations. To avoid copyright issues authors could provide links to video and images on the web instead of embedding them or create their own unique media. Though we have the technology and many hold the minimal skills requirements for assembling digital books: creating the content, gathering resources and developing an outline requires a considerable amount of time.
2 thoughts on “Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 2: We Have the Technology”
I like the ideas of teacher’s writing their own content. I know many professors who did so when I was in college. Would it be more cost-effective? If you made the teacher’s do it for free, it would be, but I don’t think that would really be fair. But what if a district hired a teacher as a special project, like when a teacher coaches a team, or is an advisor for something.
I am for such interactive materials, however, I wouldn’t consider them as the only tool in teaching. They cannot make the teacher redundant in learning process – there still will be some place for doubts and additional explanation only a teacher can provide.