Stewart,+Sonja-Midterm



**A Proposal to** **Integrate Flexbooks into the Science Curriculum** **FlexBooks: Digital Textbooks** **Lancaster Independent School District**

**Recommended by** **Sonja Stewart** **Coordinator, Instructional and Library Media**


 * Integrating Flexbooks into Science Curriculum**

There are several problems that plague the area of textbooks in our state that directly affect our own students: 01. Ongoing science instruction is presently not support by an updated textbook. In March 2009, the State of Texas adopted new standards, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). At that time, our science teachers and their peers statewide found themselves using a textbooks already nearly ten years-old. Much of the new standards for which they are responsible for teaching are not even mentioned in the textbooks they’re using. 02. Also, currently our school district does not issue students their own textbooks for at-home and other independent use. The school district for more than 10 years decided that the cost of unreturned textbooks was too high to absorb. Parents must personally visit school, make a request and sign for the privilege of using textbooks outside of the classroom. Of course the toll on homework and independent study has yet to be assessed. 03. The content of textbooks have been very controversial in our state to the point of drawing national headlines particularly science and social science. These two sets of disciplines have been embroiled with debates of Creationism vs. Evolutionism and U. S. discrimination and separation of church and state respectively. 04. Serious deficits in the state budget will further delay the adoption of new science and social studies textbooks. The education profession, normally considered recession-proof has had casualties in this global economic downturn. Many of those who lost teaching jobs are expected not to reclaim them. Therefore some watch groups predict that textbook adoption could be far away as 2015 along with resources and facets of traditional education.
 * Challenge**

Teachers and students need an option that puts up-to-date, relevant, even ground-breaking information squarely in the midst of teaching and learning. Our school district has already witnessed this past year how impactive this can be. In October 2010, the department Library Media Services, realizing the absence of a suitable textbook, premiered its action plan and support of the district’s Instructional Planning Guides. As you know, the IPG Science Library Support Sheets provided support for every science course taught in the district. We listed for science teachers every available library and instructional resource within our district for every six-weeks period. Last month when state assessment scores were published, we had phenomenal gains for every grade level and science course taught. We must build on this momentum by offering a more robust, consolidated tool.
 * Statement of Need**

As we evaluate our period without new science adopted textbook, let’s look closely at what we’re missing: 01. Our state has enjoyed being one of the Big Two in the textbook world. California and Texas are the two states to which textbook publishers cater. This may be a dubious honor, as the conservative South maybe influencing, deliberately skewing content as publishers try to appease and not offend their largest accounts. **We need an option that doesn’t use dollars and revenue as a major factor in what is published and taught.** 02. For a long time, textbooks have begun to have a distinct look and feel without much regard for printing information for the sake of building genuine and true knowledge. Textbook content seems now to be driven by appealing fonts, spacing, digestible language, headers, features, and “buzz” activities. Substance seems to have taken the back seat of the bus. **We need an option that is not restricted to visual considerations. It assumes that this is the only format that students will accept and acquire information. We need options without built-in low expectations.** 03. Textbooks publishers depend heavily on the teacher query of what they’d like to see in a textbook. The problem is that teachers often model their own favorite teacher that they’ve may have experienced. They also teach what they were taught sometimes placing a lot of value on the strands of what they learned. In effect, we teach in circles. **We need an option that helps us break knowledge out of confines of tradition and legacy teaching.** Necessity forces our hands to look closely at options of not issuing costly, outdated textbooks. Digital textbooks have been around long enough for some, trials, trends, and statistics to emerge. Ms. Middleton, I am asking you to review and consider one that I deem complimentary to the district’s science instructional goals. This option is offered by CK-12 Foundation. It’s product is aptly called, FlexBooks produced by CK12 Foundation based in Palo Alto, California. It’s founders are Neeru Khosla, and Murugan Pal.

The CK-12 Foundation describe it’s product, Flexbooks as “an open-content, web-based collaborative model. With it the foundation “intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.” CK12 Foundation further enumerates what it offers the education community.
 * Objective of Flexbooks: Digital Textbooks**

**Key Benefits**


 * Access to free textbooks
 * High quality educational content created by educators
 * Content customized to reflect "today" and the different needs of students
 * Quality ensured by CK-12's Community of Educational Practitioners
 * Increased pedagogic choice for all teachers, aligned to state standards as well as developmentally correct content
 * Supported by publishing tools that facilitate quick and easy content creation and distribution
 * Collaborative learning via a community where authors, teachers, and students create, access, share, rate, recommend, and publish

I believe that Lancaster ISD should pilot Flexbook. (1) It provides anywhere, anytime textbook access where there is no other such option. (2) It’s digital so it is a match to the information acquisition styles of our young users. (3) The information is customizable and manipulative to accommodate a wealth of knowledge, including multimedia within the text. (4) It skirts any managed and skewed perspective of anyone seeking to push an academic agenda not productive to free, unfiltered thought. (It aids our district financially which budget struggles for the past six-seven years. Flexbooks offer the opportunity minimize these challenges as it places the decisions regarding and the control of textbooks within our local learning community. That allows us from a vast body of literature to narrow content to state benchmarks, pinpoint district wide challenges, focus on school initiatives to the enrichment or remediation of individual students. The foundation is gaining traction in both K12 and higher education. They invite educators from all levels and areas to participate. This flexibility in the form of a textbook is without precedent for Lancaster ISD.  Please examine the demonstration of this tool. It is one of the best example of what Flexbook is able to do.  __[]__


 * Case Study**

Clearwater High School in Florida garnered national attention as it provided over 2,000 students a Kindle to replace it textbooks. Day two of the pilot AT&T alerted the school district that it crashed their system. Bandwidth was an issue. Their were unforeseen issues of a near economic crash on the heels of the program. The school is ahead of Florida law that requires school districts adopt digital textbooks by 2015-16. It further requires that 50 percent of the textbook budget be allocated to etextbooks. In spite of the issues, the high school say an clear and undeniable ascent of student engagement. It has been enough encouragement for the school district to move the project forward. __[]__ Although Flexbook is not specifically mentioned, this report is an indication that digital textbooks are going to become more important as state assessment and other testing will move to the digital environment. This school district seems to recognize a correlation between digital content and digital assessment.


 * Considerations to be Made**


 * Flexbook draws largely, but not solely from Wikipedia. Wikipedia has remained controversial in school librarianship. It will likely be our librarians who will introduce this tool. This problem and answer is twofold: **Librarians will have to rethink Wikipedia. Students will have to unlearn what has been taught about Wikipedia if they will be confident in the material they’re using.**
 * When informal surveys are taken about the ownership of digital devices, more than half of the class are found to be digitally equipped. The challenge remains for the third or quarter of the class not possessing wired devices. **We should plan on purchasing some devices to bridge the difference.**
 * We should prepare for two types of parents response to this emerging technology. We know our community. We can anticipate parents who will feel pressured to incur the expense because this trend will become the norm. We can also expect parents whose children have the device but feel they are not appropriate for classroom use. **We will have to craft very careful responses to both concerns.**
 * A shift in district policy will have to occur if there is to be equanimity from staff members who’ve been condition to respond to cellular and digital devices in a restrictive fashion. Ms. Middleton, I can say that the use of digital devices has been embraced with positive outcomes at the high school this past year, but that administrator has now moved to central office and the waters will have to be tested again.
 * We must monitor the acceptance of small cellular screens for academic use. Honestly, the verdict may not be in as yet for such a pivotal point. The mobile devices are prevalent. The positive is we don’t incur the expense of purchasing, maintaining or monitoring them. Our students already have them. The uncertainty is that the small screens are used recreationally so far. It remains to be realized whether the size will work for long-term reading. **We should construct an evaluative tool to assess and re-asses whether students are adjusting to the use of digital books on their own devices. We must use the tool with some regularity.**
 * Staff training will be a large undertaking. As easy as CK12 Foundation has made the Flexbooks to assemble, we may need request a Saturday for inservice very early in the school year to make it possible. This may be unpopular with the staff who already sacrificed extra summer days for CScope training. **We must deliver a perceived value and significant incentives to faculty to already is shouldering a lot during a sacrificial time.**
 * We had two days this past school year where the network completely shut down crippling instruction, attendance, etc. **We must plan alternatives as best we can such occasions. It will kin to asking teachers to have a backup for virtually every lesson. We must further explore the logistics.**
 * There are more published examples of digital textbooks use in higher education than at the k-12 level. There is no luxury of examining several models. **Our efforts will largely be trial-and-error. We going to have to take bold and courageous steps in unchartered waters.**

Tablets to use as loaners Wiki to host the program YouTube and Google Videos with a less-restrictive filter to comb for instructional material Class sets of iPod Touch devices
 * Resources Needed**

If the pilot program of this resource shows promise by evidence of increased learning and assessment, I would like to see the tool blanket other areas of the STEM initiative. In approximately, three years, I predict that the popularity of tablets and eReaders and other such devices to permeate many school districts in our area, especially if states follow Florida’s lead. I would also predict that mobile learning will widely accepted simply because it addresses computer availability and shortages. I am hopeful that our district will, by then, adopt with funding the accepted use of these digital tools.
 * Long-Term Plan**

Ms. Middleton, I would like to set up time so that I may show you a full lesson possibly an instructional unit that demonstrates the use of Flexbooks. Would you please have Ms. Curry to call me with three possible/tentative appointments so that we may visit? I look forward to speaking with you soon.