But it’s not just Rothbauer’s district that’s grown tired of outdated, printed textbooks; many schools across the country are looking for alternatives to traditional textbooks.
“We basically said, ‘Ew. These books are uninspiring. These don’t meet our needs at all,’” said social studies chair Libby Arthur of Indiana’s Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation, in an interview with Scholastic. “We sat there looking at each other and somebody said, ‘Well, what are we going to do now?’”
Greg Lewis, Arthur’s colleague in another Bartholomew high school, remembers thinking the evolution of textbooks had been “rather glacial, despite all of the PDF and online versions. They lacked a sense of narrative.”
As Rothbauer described, she was extremely lucky to have support from her principal, curriculum director, and invested teachers—all of whom are tech-savvy—to begin creating customized eTextbooks aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
Rothbauer, along with a group of educators, spent their summer developing these eTextbooks to not only reflect Common Core, but engage students.
Start with the standards
Experts who have created their own eTextbooks, including Rothbauer, say that educators should begin by using the Common Core State Standards as a rubric before looking at content creation tools.
“Use your district’s scope and sequence, existing state and national standards or the Common Core State Standards as they are published and developed,” said Joyce Valenza, teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School (Pa.), in an article for School Library Journal. “You might even begin with the outline of your old text or content from the culminating test your learners will be expected to master.”
Rothbauer and her team began by deconstructing each Common Core standard by:
- Identifying key concepts
- Determining learning targets
- Identifying the types of learning targets
- Establishing content boundaries
- Clarifying terms within the standard
- Constructing specific skill statements
- Identifying the types of learning targets and the level of rigor
Rothbauer also created a rigor/relevance framework chart.
After the standards are mapped, it’s important to divide the eTextbook into appropriate sections, complete with any key vocabulary, concepts and inquiry-based, interactive portions (including video, widgets, et cetera).
Valenza suggests placing work on the eTextbooks into an online binder, a “type of teacher-friendly platform for building—a virtual binding. We use Wikispaces for Teachers. Other choices might include PBWiki, Google Sites, LiveBinders, or Netvibes, or a course management system like Moodle, or a social networking platform like Edmodo or Ning. I am beginning to use LibGuides as a tool for building curriculum and curricular resources.”
(Next page: How to publish and where)
- #4: 25 education trends for 2018 - December 26, 2018
- Video of the Week: Dealing with digital distraction in the classroom - February 23, 2018
- Secrets from the library lines: 5 ways schools can boost digital engagement - January 2, 2018
Comments are closed.