Skip to content Skip to navigation
Summary: This is information about publishing for K-12 teachers.
The adoption of textbooks as the source of content material in the typical K-12 classroom is about to go through a historical change. Gladwell (2000) identified tipping points that, in retrospect, were obvious successors to the known knowledge or way of doing business. In this case American education is building toward a tipping point that will supplant the traditional hard copy textbook. Textbook committees have begun to adopt laptop computers, chromebooks, ipads, and mobile devices as a substitute for hard copy textbooks, workbooks, and other forms of printed material. Although publishers are moving slowly and deliberately to create digital content the real advantage to adoption of hardware devices is the opportunity to advance, enhance, and customize content material for the individual school district and local conditions. As education tracks in the direction of individualized and personalized learning, there is no better way to achieve this goal than by adapting a lesson to the children (child) within a teacher's classroom.
The Internet has opened the door for teachers to become authors of materials that can be published on the Internet through portals such as Connexions—an authoring data base that “houses” self-authored material that can be accessed by students and teachers within the classroom, across grade levels in a building, across districts, across the state . . . and beyond.
The tipping point may be the purchase of tablet computers as digital devices that are used as books and workbooks. However, the paradigm shift is manifested in the opportunity to use these devices as tools to customize material and “author” content that fits the approach, style, and pedagogy of a teacher at the local level. The teacher as an author of content opens the door for customized lessons that can be adapted by the district to align with local and state guidelines.
The challenge for a school district is in changing the paradigm from teacher as a consumer of content to teacher as author of content. In the past, hard copy textbooks were considered single stop content resources for teachers and students. The Internet has altered how educators view content. Textbook publishers "generalize" knowledge to meet the requirements and expectations of many states and many perspectives. Open Source allows for learning that can be "crowd sourced" by many perspectives and filtered by one's own critical understanding of the subject. It also allows for customizing content to meet local conditions and individual needs.
Through open source software there is the opportunity to author high quality content that can be continuously refined. Teachers are able to develop lessons that enhance and complement content that addresses individual learning needs.
Teacher authoring is a fundamentally different approach to developing content for the typical K-12 school district. As teacher leadership gains credence and acceptance as an expectation for classroom teachers there is, as well, an opportunity to advance teachers as content specialists who publish high quality content.
1. Open Source first needs to be understood and accepted; 2. Open Source is a way to disseminate knowledge at low cost; 3. There is an acceleration of virtual content on tablet computers and mobile devices; 4. Open Source will offer locally published curriculum and instructional/pedagogical materials; 5. Teachers are the authors of quality content material.
Reference Citation
Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
James Berry is a professor of educational administration at Eastern Michigan University
More about this module: Metadata | Downloads | Version History
This work is licensed by James E. Berry under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.
Last edited by James E. Berry on Nov 9, 2012 3:17 pm -0600.
