... it might be worth thinking about what we're getting into and what we're leaving behind? Image: Ilse Reijs
Ken Wilson's latest post ("E-learning and the Theory of the Adjacent Possible") is a cracking good read from one of ELT's long-termers who has seen a lot of things change, come and go. In it, he looks at the possible options for digital coursebooks, and explores a variety of practical issues that accompany this rather awkward shuffle of ours from materials that are primarily paper-based into ones that are partially or wholly digital.
In the comments section of that post, I responded to Ken's challenge for someone to openly defend the good old-fashioned paper book. This was interesting for me, as a teacher who embraces technology and digital materials design. But it also got me thinking...
Are we trying to dive too quickly and unconditionally into digital delivery of educational materials? Is this new space so full of advantages and devoid of caveats? Is what so many of us propose be left behind, in reality, so incapable of competing?
If you're expecting what follows to be flavoured with the same sort of nostalgic unease that accompanies so many people's comparisons of the good old days and hand-written letters with the current haste and sterile compression of cryptic-like text messages, then expect again. In coming at this issue of digital texts/materials from the opposite direction, I found some reasonable objections (or at least warning bells) that I feel are mostly grounded in practical concerns.
So here we go... ten reasons why I think digital texts will possibly result in problems and disadvantages, compared to our current mode of making educational materials on paper:
1. Access and Inequality
Okay, so this is the easy one, and I'll get it out of the way first...
It's going to be some time before all students in all locations have both access to technology, but also the skills required to use it fluently to facilitate learning. And a very large number of English language learners (not to mention their teachers) are located in precisely the places where the technology and skills will flow through to the slowest.
Even in first world countries, it is acknowledged that not all students have Internet access at home (nor even computers, for that matter), and this poses a serious disadvantage to them in situations where learning materials and programs are set to become predominantly digital and Internet-based in nature.
I don't know... It would seem like a shame to me if our headlong dash into digital ended up in education systems that help the students who possibly need it the least, while (further) cutting off those who need it the most. At the very least, I hope we can have hybrid approaches until the discrepancy between the tech-haves and tech-have-nots narrows a lot more.
2. The Environment
I'll confess this is shaky ground for me, not knowing a lot in the way of facts or figures... but I have heard that, currently at least, we still burn up more of our environment through our digital and online endeavours than we do with traditional print-based modes of production. Even though it is predicted that this trend will reverse (and hopefully reasonably soon), it might not be a good idea to use conservation of the environment as a valid rationale for going (all out) digital until it actually is a valid rationale.
3. Layout
Right, so this is a fairly major one for me...
Despite the convenience of laptops, notebooks and hand-held devices, and all the whiz-bang things they can do with electronic layering, so far they have not managed to find a way to better what I call the experience of the "full page spread" (gosh, I know what that reminds so many of you of, but let's stay on track here, shall we?) -- the open, double page presentation of content. Well, okay, I can manage to experience this on my desktop computer, with its colossally large screen, but that sort of screen size is not what most experts are talking about (or designing for) when it comes to edtech.
Oh sure, from that initial blur of a coursebook page on your tablet screen, you can zoom in to the parts you actually want/need to read, but this is not the same as having a book open in front of you. I liked what I saw of Lindsay Clandfield's Global when I viewed digital samples of it, but it paled in comparison to my experience of picking up a physical version and scanning across full pages and double pages. With my own coursebooks and a range of other materials I've designed, there has always been deliberate consideration of what will be seen by the learners and teachers across two full pages all at once, and how this can affect learning and reference processes.
In this respect, I have to admit that physical books and how material works across broad spaces (where the eye can flick about and focus at will) is a valuable resource for classrooms, and digital material (while admittedly a whole new modus operandi, with new styles, conventions and opportunities) so far results in a rather chunky and clunky experience when it comes to viewing and skipping around with material.
4. Manoeuvrability
Watch your learners flip forward or backward in their books, then hold a series of pages upright so that they can refer simultaneously to two different pages located in completely different parts of the book (resulting in a variation to the layout/spread issue I talked about above). Now ask your learners to swap books and check each other's work or complete a communicative activity that requires them to write or respond to something their classmate has written.
How quickly and easily do you think that could happen with material viewed on computers?
Well, sure, both of these processes are entirely possible with digital materials (with the swapping one in particular being easy if the devices are hand-held, or adapted so that it is about file-sharing)... I'm just not sure they'll be as convenient or as quick (especially if only half of the class know or can quickly learn the technical processes involved).
Perhaps this one was a dud... Move along, please, nothing to see here?
5. Sense of Ownership and Progression
This could well be a generational thing, but I don't feel anywhere near as attached to files on my computer as I do to physical books lining the bookcase next to my desk.
When I was a language student myself, I used to love the feeling (facilitated by sight) of reaching the mid-way point of my coursebook or novel, verifying with a glance just how much I'd achieved so far. The feeling continued and grew as the book(s) neared completion.
Also, as the terms and years flew by, I liked the feeling of adding another completed book or notebook, carefully in order, to a dedicated space on my bookshelf. These were my books, and there at a glance was my progress - at least on paper, that is. And I'll admit it: I liked it when visitors saw what was on my bookshelves and oohed and aahed over what I appeared to have achieved from a study perspective.
Many of the learners I've taught over the years have expressed similar sentiments about their coursework materials, especially if they were good/enjoyable ones.
I don't get a similar feeling of ownership or accomplishment when I view the file icons on my eReader or computer. But then again, perhaps I am lost in digital translation here... Perhaps future generations of learners will fiew their digital files with similar feelings of progress and pride -- who knows?
6. Square peg in a round hole
If you take a look at what teenagers and adults, for that matter, are currently doing with their computers and mobile devices in particular, not much of it is education-related. It's all about chatting, catching up on news, and -- well, entertainment.
Based on that, I find the notion that language learners will want to do all their study and language practice on a hand-held device (or that this mode will automatically encourage them to apply themselves more) in their free time somewhat over-optimistic.
For sure, I have seen the novelty and convenience of computer-based learning appear to motivate learners, but novelty and convenience can be slippery things to start relying on in a learning program. In any case, is this really a compelling rationale for doing away with paper-based materials altogether?
7. Reliability
Digital materials will no doubt result in an uber-plethora of resources for teachers and learners to access and put together into learning programs.
But with that freedom and depth also comes (potentially) dubious or doubtful reliability. Anyone can knock together material and make it look reasonably attractive and authoritative online; doing so on published paper takes more time, investment and commitment to doing it really well.
There are shortcomings in printed materials, especially in terms of variety and creativity (and "access" for budding writers), but at least most of what we get is well thought out and reliable for language programs. Will we be able to say the same for the huge hoard of stuff that will appear on the web?
Beyond that, I haven't yet found a printed book with a virus attached to it (there was that exception with the 9-year-old student in Korea who coughed and spluttered all over the student book I lent to him for one lesson...), nor anything that could potentially destroy parts of my life's work in one fell swoop.
8. The fast-food diet
Watching my learners use electronic dictionaries, or instant auto-check grammar exercises, I've often found myself thinking of the humans in the far future as they are portrayed in that movie WALL-E... You know, how they are all obese to the point that their bones have started to dissolve and they can't move without some sort of machine-provided assistance?
I know this is an issue of how rather than what, but the sheer convenience of tech-facilitated material often appears capable of encouraging instant (but fleeting) gratification rather than the exercising and strengthening required to develop more sturdy muscles for learning and retention.
The student hunting through his paper-based dictionary for a word, muttering it over and over, pondering it, guessing about it, running his peripheral attention over other words as they flow past before the needed one eventually rolls up... seems (to me) to have invested a lot more in that word than the classmate over there who looked it up and translated it in three seconds flat on his portable or online dictionary. The tech-endowed classmate is of course already three sentences ahead by now, but has he really grasped and appreciated what he was looking up?
Similarly, the auto-corrected grammar exercises on the computer are looked at for all of two seconds, which is a bit different to the student who is checking his answers from a written answer key located in a different section of his book.
These criticisms of tech-based material and programs are really unfair and uninformed in some ways, but I honestly do think, when everything is at one's fingertips, there are risks. One of them is that students might become faster, but shallower. More agile, but weaker...?
9. Theft
Anyone who writes professional materials knows that, at any given moment, there is a teacher or school somewhere in the world photocopying it illegally and distributing it either for free or for a fee that doesn't include any sort of revenue for the actual writer or publisher. If it isn't being photocopied, then it is being scanned, page-by-page, for free circulation out of an ad revenue generating site in Russia.
But photocopied and scanned theft of materials really does pale in comparison to what we are in for if/when most all material becomes digital in nature from the outset...
How willing are we (really) to write what we do basically for free, or knowing that others will be profiting from it more than we might be?
And for those out there saluting the opportunity to download and distribute and pirate material, when was the last time you actually researched, designed and wrote a full set of original learning materials?
I'm not sure, but if digital publishing of materials evolves in a way that makes it financially unattractive to seriously good writers, this won't necessarily be such a good thing...
10. All or nothing
You've seen the headlines, right? Printed books becoming obsolete. Digital the only way forward. Etc.
But are we potentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Sticking with only printed books (as is, a sort of publisher's head in the sand, if you will), and trying to replace a (up to this point) credible and reliable means of generating material for learning with an entirely digital one, both strike me as being unhelpful and rather risky.
I haven't entirely convinced myself yet, but I do think both formats can be valid if they stick to particular and unique characteristics they have, and may just become even more valid as we find ways to make, enhance and integrate them in a variety of new ways.
So there you have it. My ten potential reasons why digital materials might not represent quite the improvement and progress forward that so many of us (so far) appear to be quite enamoured with.
I'll admit it freely, I struggled mightily to rationalise some of them, and there is no doubt at all that proponents of digital learning will find dozens of counter-arguments to most all of them without raising much of an intellectual sweat.
But let's make sure printed materials are actually broken before we assign them to the scrap heap left in the wake of digital progress.
In the meantime, I think there may just be some exciting ways to write new sorts of printed books, and integrate them with digital materials that play to their own unique strengths...
=D
