I had to check that my computer wasn't an old black-and-white
television set showing blocky white text Thursday morning and that I
wasn't clacking away on a 6502 computer over a 110-baud modem when I
heard about Apple's announcements relating to iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and its new multimedia textbooks. That's because I've heard it all before.
When I was a snot-nosed kid in 1981 with my fancy Ohio Scientific
C1P, educational software vendors were already hawking textbook
complements for the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80. Today, the
object is to replace textbooks altogether while enhancing them beyond
what paper can manage. As a grizzled and cynical technology veteran, I
ask: What's been learned in 30 years? Apparently, that you can make the
same arguments and believe that they've never been made before.
From the dawn of the concept of multimedia, firms that cater to the education market
have been pushing the notion that adding animation, audio, and video
(as each form of media became more readily embeddable) would engage
students further, and improve achievement. Printed books are boring.
They just sit there! That's one of their advantages, too.
At Apple's press event on Thursday, senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller went down the same tired path.
"One thing we hear louder than anything else is student engagement,
inspiring kids to want to discover and learn," he said. Kids are bored.
The iPad is fun and engaging, Schiller explained. This is the same
contention made for decades, and I challenge readers to find any
longitudinal studies tracking students who have used or are using
packaged multimedia-enhanced instruction showed measured and consistent
improvement over control groups.
A 2003 meta-study by SRI International--"Effects of Using
Instructional Technology in Elementary and Secondary Schools," funded by
the National Science Foundation--looked at dozens of studies from the
1970s through the 1990s. The conclusion:
"It is not yet clear how much computer-based programs can contribute
to the improvement of instruction in American schools. Although many
researchers have carried out controlled evaluations of technology
effects during the last three decades, the evaluation literature still
seems patchy."
The areas in which measurable improvement was found were mostly in
drills related to math and science and better reading scores. The one
bright spot was in interactive science simulations, in which phenomena
can be modeled and examined and variables twiddled to see real-world
interactions and theoretical ones.
More recently, a New York Times article
examined sustained spending and a committed approach to technology
integration in an Arizona school district over several years that
produced test scores that stagnated in comparison to improvements in the
rest of the state. Reporter Matt Richtel wrote:
"Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being
motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital
skills--like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools--at the expense of
math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology
advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask
questions later."
What Apple demonstrates with a textbook-optimized version of iBooks
is nothing special in this context; only the iPad makes it a new
proposition. Making interactive multimedia available as part of
education, whether in the context of a lesson or a course of study isn't
new. The power, portability, touch interaction, and immersion of the
iPad relative to what it can perform is different. But that has more to
do with how frequently and readily a student pulls out a book to study
(digital or otherwise): a laptop isn't inherently more tedious to use
when that's the format in which a textbook or instructional program is
made available.
Apple seems to think that making the tool available solves the
problem of pedagogy. Textbook makers and perhaps entrepreneurs have been
just waiting for the moment in which they could take all this media and
stick it together. It's as if Apple has forgotten interactive CD-ROMs,
and isn't aware of the current generation of textbooks as Web apps,
easily available from any desktop or laptop computer in a school.
For instance, Nature magazine's publishing arm is releasing Principles of Biology,
a 200-module Web-based college textbook that incorporates text,
figures, video, and simulation--and works on all desktop operating
systems and mobile platforms in contrast to Apple's current
locked-to-the-iPad approach. Nature has committed to constant updates
(it's a Web app, remember? no new downloads), and it's $49 per student
for a lifetime subscription. Nature isn't making such a big deal out of
the interactive parts, either; that's part of the bigger picture and
bigger package. It's a multi-course set of curriculum enhancement for
university-level teaching.
Apple's 1.0 approach on digital textbooks seems so much less
ambitious. In the K-12 world, it requires schools to supply kids with
iPads; in college, ostensibly students would need to buy one. Bulk
educational sales at Apple are, as of today at least, still locked into
the mode of making a single purchase and then transferring licenses to
individual iTunes Store accounts. That might work for college students,
but can't fly in the K-12 world, where school districts wouldn't be
allowed to give digital textbooks permanently to students.
The
approach on release also doesn't compete well on price and flexibility.
Apple touted a $14.99 price tag on high-school textbooks, but given
that the textbooks would move with students' iTunes Store accounts, each
time a new class needs the textbook, the purchase has to occur again. A
printed textbook might last two or more years and be used by several
students, which obviates some of its high cost. For college students, a
$15 textbook locked to their account makes vastly more sense, but $200
to $500 college print textbooks marked down to $15 weren't being
discussed on Thursday.
I'm not knocking the iPad. It's an amazing device, and I expect its
educational benefits will emerge from independent software developers
who produce specific apps that fill and advance needs, such as the
science simulators discussed earlier, many examples of which you can buy
for the iPad. Schools will gradually adopt the iPad and Apple will
provide decent management tools for IT folk and licensing approaches for
school-owned hardware. At this point, iBooks 2 and digital textbooks
feel like I'm watching a M.A.S.H.
episode for the 15th time. I'm waiting
for Apple to produce some entirely new programming before I accept that
the future has arrived.
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