I first discovered free, open sourced, online text books when I was taking a special education class last summer. http://www.ck12.org Here was a text book that had interactive features, videos, activities for students, written by other science teachers, free and completely editable. It was a complete revelation for me that I could use what other teachers had created and contribute to it. What an amazing tool for science and math educators. Just recently I have discovered another good reason for using these kinds of text books. I was reading a text book section from the Ck12 data base of texts about lactose and lactose intolerance. It was typical of many science textbooks in that it had a paragraph at the beginning with a social context designed to hook the reader (in this case about lactose intolerance) and help them connect to the science. The next part of the text was a bone dry explanation of how enzymes worked. I have known science teachers to skip the first part with the example and just read the part they consider to be the "real science" the second part about the enzymes.
My thoughts are that providing a context for learning the science is too important to skip and it should be woven into the entire chapter/section rather than held in its own separate section isolated from the other content. From my own experience with text books, I believe science teachers skip the context at the beginning because it is not relevant to their students.
So here is where the online text book comes in. Teachers are free to edit, modify, take out sections, add sections and do whatever to the text chapter of the online text book. They can add information to the bone dry second part from the first part to weave the two together and contextualize the information. They can add or subtract information or change the wording to make the text more culturally relevant. This means each year you can change it up based on the passions and identities of your particular students. Online open source textbooks are tools for equity in education.
, #ED677
My thoughts are that providing a context for learning the science is too important to skip and it should be woven into the entire chapter/section rather than held in its own separate section isolated from the other content. From my own experience with text books, I believe science teachers skip the context at the beginning because it is not relevant to their students.
So here is where the online text book comes in. Teachers are free to edit, modify, take out sections, add sections and do whatever to the text chapter of the online text book. They can add information to the bone dry second part from the first part to weave the two together and contextualize the information. They can add or subtract information or change the wording to make the text more culturally relevant. This means each year you can change it up based on the passions and identities of your particular students. Online open source textbooks are tools for equity in education.
, #ED677