There is much talk these days about abandoing traditional publishers and having teachers create their own content. There are many tools that make this possible, but just because it can be done, does not mean that it should be done. Having been a classroom teacher for almost 20 years and with increasing record keeping (data collection) I am not sure when a teacher can add this to their to do list. If a district did wish to create their own digital content…
Apple recently announced changes to a few apps and a new program that will likely play a big role in education, particularly if your institution is using iPads. iBooks was upgraded to allow the program to support epub 3, books that are rich in media and interactivity. Apple also entered into an agreement with textbook publishers to create true media rich texts. The books are currently priced at about $15 much cheaper then a paper textbook but not reusable or resalable. Apple introduced the program iBooksAuthor that allows…
Push Pop press, which was developing software to easily create and publish interactive media rich books, has abandoned its development and sold the program/process to facebook so facebook can become a bigger book. Kind of sad really. Trying to find quality, interactive media rich books already created is pretty slim. The possibilities offered here by PushPop were wonderful. I have been looking for such books for the ipads our students use. Most textbooks I find are still primarily text based. …
It is hard to predict the future and even harder when it comes to technology. In my last post Getting Ready for eBooks I wrote about how we need to prepare for eBooks as they are becoming ubiquitous. As a school we need to make sure we have the infrastructure to support a variety of web ready devices, a process for creating and distributing eBooks and support for staff in how to create and use eBooks and “eDocuments” for their…
One of the roles of a tech integration specialist to is to explore new technologies and how they might play a role in education. When I started in this field it was how to use word, excel, powerpoint, and video. We talked about how to share work with each other by passing around floppy disks. We could create web pages but nothing was download and upload-able. A mere 10 years later I help teachers sort through the overwhelming number of…