Going digital: re- conceptualising textbooks

1. Going digital: re-conceptualising textbooks • Terje Väljataga • Centre for Educational Technology • Institute of Informatics • Tallinn University • 2013 Photo: S. Fiedler

2. Where do I come from? http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastianfiedler/5217832006/

3. Centre for Educational Technology • Established 1996 in the Faculty of Education • 2002 moved to Open University as e-learning service provider • 2005 became the R&D unit within the Institute of Informatics • Financed only by research and development projects

4. Centre for Educational Technology • Staff: 25 researchers, including 10 from abroad (Germany, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Cape Verde, Jordan, Georgia), designers, developers • Focus: education + technology • R&D projects in Technology - Enhanced Learning, Human – Computer Interaction

5. Centre for Educational Technology • MA programs: Human Computer Interaction; Educational Technology; Teacher of Computer Science, School ICT Manager • PhD program: Information Society Technologies • Labs: Apple Lab, Interaction Design Lab, Digital Safety Lab

6. Centre for Educational Technology

7. Centre for Educational Technology Our philosophy: • Social shaping view on technology and co-evolutionary development: human needs, imagination, and activity in turn will shape the further development of technology and new human abilities emerge • Technology transfer without appropriate cultural transfer is not sufficient

8. Centre for Educational Technology Our focus: • Continuously expanding digital transformation not only poses challenges related to new technological instrumentation, it also requires fundamental shifts and formidable changes from old habits and mindsets to new approaches of learning and working

9. Going digital … Estonian Strategy for Lifelong Learning 2020: • Shift in teaching and learning paradigm • Competent teachers and school leaders • Meeting the job market needs • Higher participation rates, effective funding models • Digital turn in formal education system

10. Going digital … Digital turn in formal education system: • Integrating digital culture into teaching and learning • Quality digital learning resources for all curricula • Access to digital infrastructure, including 1:1 computing • Digital competences of teachers and students

11. Going digital … • The change in educational legislation (PGS §20, Dec 2012) requires all textbook publishers to release also digital versions of their textbooks and workbooks • European Union open educational resources vision

12. Evolution of technology http://www.screentekinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Old-Computer.jpg

13. Going digital… http://www.flickr.com/photos/bionicteaching/4404293469/

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/45972760/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/45972760/

15. Going digital… http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmreesescott/8381132964/

16. Educational technology generations

17. BYOD - Bring your own device BYOD - Bring your own device http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/6153522068/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ulez/5429220347/

18. Going digital … Current e-textbooks … … in a digital, mainly PDF format (e-textbook) … in a specific form (iOS apps and epub, etc.) … logically ordered teaching and learning providing a synthesis of current knowledge

19. Drawbacks with e-textbooks Replication of existing practices, models and behaviors, where traditional values, beliefs and practices prevail Hardly any room for learners to construct and build their own knowledge through interacting with a collection of widely distributed artifacts, people and environments http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhobkirk/8343092496

20. Drawbacks with e-textbooks Not using inexhaustible potential of technology for different configurations and purposes Do not support different screen sizes and are pedagogically limited Hardly allows any interaction, manipulation and remediation facilitated by various configurations of technologies http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/6153522068/

21. Drawbacks with e-textbooks • The evolution of the textbook is exclusively triggered by economic forces from the printing press to digital production … • … and from digital production to digital distribution … • … leaving teaching philosophy, pedagogical approaches and technological potential untouched

22. Going digital … The extent to which a learner gains the same pedagogical benefit from a printout of the digital content as from the content itself is the extent to which nothing of pedagogical value by using the Web has been done

23. Going digital … Davy (2007): cluster professionally authored related content items around a specific learning objective – textbook broken down into its components that can be accessed in a number of different ways Butler (2009): e-textbooks as aggregations of various materials, not just what a publisher has aggregated in a single book http://www.flickr.com/photos/abstractmachine/6732650555/

24. Going digital… Pedagogical challenges: • Trialogic learning: collaborative knowledge building resulting with shareable digital artefacts • Learning in design mode vs belief mode • Flipped classroom, game- and project-based learning • Self-regulated learning, changing role of the teacher • Re-conceptualising e-textbooks http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhillan/3848315549

25. Learnmix The goal is … … to re-conceptualize the e-Textbook as aggregations of both professionally authored and user-contributed content accessible through a wide range of artifacts

26. Learnmix It tackles … 1. … Human-computer interaction design challenges: Ubiquitous computing interaction, ecologies of artifacts - Computing, not computers, will characterize the next era of the computer age - It is less and less about the devices and more about the activities we can accomplish with and through technology

27. Learnmix Previously there was one technology, one application, one user, all packaged into one fairly stable unit There is now an ever changing configuration of technologies, applications and actors

28. Learnmix It tackles … 2. … Pedagogical challenges: moving away from replicating traditional classroom-based teaching practices and knowledge transmission model - enabling learners to become actively engaged constructors of their own experience and understanding of phenomena, building new knowledge by interacting with artifacts, people and environments

29. Learnmix Focus on ubiquitous interaction design and ICT implementation in schools (on primary, secondary and gymnasium level) … … from the perspective of technology as mediators facilitating the active engagement of participants in knowledge building process

30. Learnmix Moving towards the direction, where … … learners develop not only knowledge-building competencies but also skills to modify and adapt their ecology of artifacts as needed to suit their purposes or interests … remediate and remix the selected mediators to create new representations, relationships and expressions … develop dispositions to work at idea improvement (content and its representation)

32. Thank you for your attention! Dr. Terje Väljataga Centre for Educational Technology terje.valjataga@tlu.ee http://terjevaljataga.eu 19/19