Teachers in the 1990’s were for the most part provided textbooks, teacher’s guides, lab manuals and workbooks.  Many schools had libraries with audiovisual departments.  How many of us remember filmstrips and laserdiscs?  Teachers did not create class web pages nor need to search for or create the materials need for their classrooms.  Now we expect teachers do all of these things in addition to their usual duties and responsibilities.

In the early 1990’s we did not have the technologies that we do now to create media rich content for our classrooms.  We can create very targeted material to meet our individual instructional needs and highly personal learning experiences for our students. How we access and create content has changed radically from the 1990’s. To reflect this change we need to change how we work as schools and departments when it comes to curriculum writing and developing content.

Many schools are a couple of years out from full 1:1 deployment of iPads or other device.  It is during this time of transition that schools should have an eye on future development of digital texts and media. Creating the elements that will become part of a digital text is the most time consuming part of the process.  As schools adopt and adapt the new common core standards curriculum review committees should begin the process of collecting materials for creating these textbooks.  Teacher’s can collect smart notebook lessons, slideshows, video lab experiments and lessons. If departments work collectively to create a repository of such elements when it comes to creating the final product you are that much closer.  Organization is half the battle.

If districts are to move from purchased text to school created materials they should invest time and resources to the development of these initial texts. This could take the form of summer curriculum and textbook writing. Making smaller texts around units or themes of instruction may make it easier to get a handle on the process. Once these initial texts are created then maintenance and updating will be much easier to manage at a teacher or department level.

Planning is the key for schools to create digital textbooks.  The materials that would be included in an interactive text need to be created and collected.  A time consuming process but if done in a collaborative thoughtful process then manageable, “many hands make light work”. The texts, at least their outline, should be created as part of the curriculum writing process.  Once materials are collected and the texts outline then books can be assembled. As educators we have never had such an opportunity to create engaging and target resources to support our student’s individual learning.  Our learning environments will never be the same.