When Science Fiction Become Reality

Back in 1997 Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle (in the style of R.A. Heinlein) wrote a "juvenile" science fiction series with the central characters being young adults. These books used real science as did the R.A. Heinlein ones. In one of the books, Higher Education, a large part of the focus on the education system. As part of that story the students in school didn't read their books, instead, they watched videos and had electronic readers read the books aloud to them. So it looks like to some extent we are now approaching that science fiction waypoint, as now less than half prefer to read a textbook versus watching a video of the content. This could also mean that we need to work harder to make the books more enjoyable and understandable. I can say that as a science teacher, especially when teaching in middle school, I and my students would become frustrated with our textbooks, as most science textbooks were written two grade levels above the grade that they were given to. Additionally, you find that most science textbooks had more new words to learn that even the foreign language textbooks. So, in the end, it could be that students are just frustrated with the design of their books, or they might not like reading as much as watching. We might also want to look at new formats and designs like those textbooks from CK12.

Poll: Gen Z prefers YouTube over textbooks

Fifty-nine percent of Generation Z -- those ages 14 to 23 -- say they prefer learning via YouTube over traditional textbooks, according to a poll by Pearson Education. They polled 2,500 people between ages 14 and 40 and found that only 47% of Generation Z students preferred textbooks, compared with 60% of millennials.

Axios (9/22)

Comments

Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels. I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support...

Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text. These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted. The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be ...

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 8: Textbook structure

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle...

eBook News

Search This Blog