Evolution, Revolution or Convolution?

As the school year winds down, I am finally catching up on reading print subscriptions (yes...print...painful but necessary?) to a variety of library and professional educator magazines.  I came across this article in Scholastic Administrator yesterday.  It's just a "skimmer" article but poses some interesting questions and options for future classroom content.

Scholastic, Spring 2012

IBooks Author is slowly changing the way we operate.  Gone are the days of asking your friendly, local media specialist if you can copy chapters, short stories, poems, articles from various sources and put them into your own class "textbook".  With iAuthor (my term), teachers can make their own, entirely interactive, textbook with videos, links, etc...viewable entirely on the iPad (or computer).  Textbook companies, like Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill and Pearson, are quickly working to use this new tool as well.  They are offering textbooks at a greatly reduced $14.99!  Quite a bit different than the $60+ for print versions.

I will be the first to admit there are some serious limitations to iBook Author...licensing and proprietary software being the main concern.  Apple is awesomely proprietary and doesn't play well with others...no Windows version of iBooks Author, created textbooks are viewable only in iBooks on the iPad (which means you need to buy iPads, etc...

However, creating your own textbooks is a great idea.  There are other options as well.  Five distinct FREE possibilities:

1. Use Diigo or Delicious to bookmark sites and resources (articles online,...) for your classes.  Create a stack of materials and share these resources with your classes.
2. Use Livebinders to collect all your materials into an online "3-ring" binder...tabbed and organized.  Livebinder is awesomely easy to use.
3. Aggregate your resources with Google Sites or a wiki site.  I prefer Google sites because they are easy, included with our Google Apps for Education accounts, and integrate videos and gadgets well.
4. Use course software (Edmodo,...) to collect resources and create online, blended classes.
5. Use a blog, like this one, to collect resources and share content and ideas!

The important concept is finding delivery methods that meet the needs of our students for timely, relevant and meaningful learning and engagement.  

They are ready...are we?