Free, Shareable Resources from Open Course Library

Eighty-one courses are now available from Open Course Library. The Library, funded by the Washington State Legislature and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, features courses for four-year and community colleges. Many of these courses, such as those in mathematics, science, social studies, and foreign language, include shareable materials, which could be used or adjusted for high school student learning. These are not online courses, such as those available through Coursera, but instead materials and ideas you can use to enhance your own courses. An Open Course Library (OCL) How-to Guide is available to help you with downloading pdf versions of the courses.

Use Net Texts App to Create Great Courses for iPad and Android Devices

Looking for ways to get coursework your students can use on mobile devices? With the free Net Texts app, you can use the app’s content management website to find already prepared texts or to prepare your own courses by selecting materials and matching content from Net Text’s library of resources. The interactive texts you create or select work with iPad and Android systems.  Download the iPad version from iTunes and the Android version from Google Play. To see how easy this eText maker is to use, go to the site and click on the video introduction to the product.

What to Do About Textbooks?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just order iPads or some other device with all the interactive texts and curricular materials we wanted for our students? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was possible for schools and that they could afford whatever it cost? Even if the funding is there, most of the time schools can’t just call up a publisher’s rep, find out what’s available and order. Let’s say you want to change your elementary reading program, but most of what you’ll find online is meant to enhance your program, give additional practice to students who need it, and/or enrich the program for advanced students. The problem is: Where’s the core program? Do you have to use your old texts or have the teachers create their own online courses?

Although, some teachers are adept at creating outstanding courses using free online resources, many need the school system to supply a text, an online program, and/or materials for teaching. Because of funding difficulties, some schools have decided that the best path to follow is to continue to use old textbooks, even it they have to be rebound. This approach saves money while allowing teachers to branch out from the texts to online learning and apps that are free or very low cost. It also gives those extending the life of old texts more time to make decisions about directions for the future.

Pearson Answers eText Questions

Pearson, the publisher that seems to be leading the way in development of eTexts, offers answers to questions for those worried about the transition to Pearson eTexts. At the eText FAQ page, you will find information about hardware requirements, whether Flash is required, where to get the Pearson eText app, access codes, compatibility with eText readers, collaborative learning, email between students and teachers, and use with iPad, iPod Touch, and smart phones.

Digital Texts: A Good Idea or Not?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called for schools to use digital texts to better enable student learning, to help students of the United States keep up with other students in the world, and to save schools money. eSchool News’ Meris Stansbury, reminds us that not all schools have (or can afford) the resources needed to use digital texts and not all students have access to digital texts at home. Calling for comments about digital texts in schools, Meris found that educators agreed that not all students, families, and schools were ready for the digital text revolution. Digital devices that will make eTexts usable aren’t yet available in all schools and homes. They mentioned that digital texts should make use of the multimedia options available and not just be textbooks copied into digital format.  Some who are trying digital texts say all the “kinks” haven’t been worked out and that teachers need more training to be able to select valuable digital resources. Why call them texts, anyway? Is it one compiled text we need for our courses or will our students be sampling from the world of information available online? How to transition to this is the question.

More Online Courses Available

It’s becoming a bit easier to find online courses for our students these days. iTunes just announced the availability of Environmental Psychology from the University of California at Irvine, Daring to do Mathematics and Writing Creatively by The Open University, The Sonnets of Shakespeare from the University of South Florida, Principles of Physics from La Trobe University, Statistics by HEC Paris, and more. While most of the courses are for college or upper level high school students, you can now create your own courses for the iPad in iTunesU. Just go to the course manager, then give your Apple ID and password or create an account. If your school isn’t connected with an iTunes institution, you can still create courses and give your students access. To be published in iTunesU, your school needs to apply to be part of Apple’s online university.

TCI Brings Social Studies Learning Alive

TCI was founded by a group of teachers who wanted to improve the way Social Studies is taught. Until recently, they specialized in traditional textbooks. Those texts have been transformed into digital format so that teachers and students can be part of paperless classrooms. TCI offers a complete online learning system for Social Studies at all levels, K-12. The system, according to CEO Bert Bower, a former Social Studies teacher, “is robust enough for tech-savvy teachers, yet intuitive and easy for technophobes.” TCI features excellent content, rich images, file sharing, messaging, interactives, bookmarking, maps, glossaries, and much more. Text-to-audio, both in English and Spanish, is part of the program, as are game-like reading challenges and interactive student notebooks for online writing and drawing activities that are based on the common Core Standards.  Try the program by signing up for the company’s 30-day free trial.

Looking for Mathematics & Science eTexts for iPads?

If you are watching for etexts at the App Store, you’ll find that more are being added every day, especially for high school science and mathematics. Both Pearson and McGraw-Hill, for example, have national editions of their biology books ready for download at $14.99 each. The books include traditional text content, interactive experiences, reading support, and options for encouraging student learning. There are also etexts for chemistry, physics, astronomy, environmental science, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, etc.  If you’d like to browse a list of texts available at the App Store, click the link above and you’ll find those that are ready for download by clicking on “See all textbooks in the iBook store.” For many of the books, you can download sample chapters.

Largest Integrated Library of Digital Books

A dozen more publishers have been added to Capstone Digital’s myOn reader bringing the total number of books students can now access in digital format with “multimedia supports (embedded dictionary, highlighting, and audio)” to over 2500. The program motivates students to read, provides a variety of recommended books for each student, offers Lexile exams and growth in reading trajectories, and creates reports for students and teachers. Capstone works hard to transform excellent books into multimedia reading experiences by publishing over 1000 books a year. If you’d like a complete list of all books available on myON reader, complete the online form.

Rocky Transition to eTexts/Online Learning?

There’s lots of hype about electronic textbooks and online learning instead of printed texts, but who knows where we are when it comes to this transition? Surely, it will happen someday. It’s inevitable that in the future students will be able to access exactly what they need in coursework from their mobile devices. But what about in the school year 2012-2013? Some teachers have written their own books, district committees are working on them, and publishing companies are trying to provide courses as soon as possible. For the most part, teachers won’t be throwing away textbooks, but instead supplementing print material with free and for-pay online resources.

Some school officials say that to use electronic materials in their schools, they have to realize a cost benefit. With the cost of mobile technologies combined with the cost of broadband, etexts, and software, will schools save money at this time? Some schools opt for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and only provide devices for those who cannot afford them. Schools in Vail, Arizona, don’t buy print text anymore; instead, they spend their money on digital technologies. This way, Vail students and teachers can access educational resources whenever needed. These include open educational resources, and shared online lessons and video. However, like BYOD, this method means that teachers must be knowledgeable, not only in their subject areas, but also in transforming their classrooms to a new type of learning.