Ditch That Textbook

Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom

Matt Miller

• Publisher: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780986155413
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildungstechnologie

Textbooks are symbols of centuries-old education. They're often outdated as soon as they hit students' desks. Acting "by the textbook" implies compliance and a lack of creativity. It's time to ditch those textbooks—and those textbook assumptions about learning! In Ditch That Textbook, teacher and blogger Matt Miller encourages educators to throw out meaningless, pedestrian teaching and learning practices. He empowers them to evolve and improve on old, standard, teaching methods. Ditch That Textbook is a support system, toolbox, and manifesto to help educators free their teaching and revolutionize their classrooms.

SECTION 1
WHY GO DIGITAL?

Digital technology has changed the game in education. The devices students carry in their pockets are supremely more powerful than the massive computers that helped put a man on the moon in 1969. The Internet makes it possible to communicate with virtually anyone around the world in a matter of seconds instead of weeks or months.

Today’s advanced technology offers many advantages; it also presents a new set of challenges. If harnessed correctly, technology can help classrooms transform into places where students learn valuable, relevant lessons that will help equip them for their future lives and careers. If technology is misused or, worse, omitted from the classroom, students will miss out on opportunities to develop important skills they’ll need to keep up with a constantly changing marketplace. If our job is to prepare students for the real world, the question isn’t if we should go digital, but how to go digital — starting now.

<Chapter 1>
FREE ACCESS

Let’s imagine, for a moment that I — a humble teacher and blogger from Indiana — wanted to meet with John Dewey. I’m talking about John Dewey, the groundbreaking educational thinker and reformer from the 1900s. We both have had a passion for connecting education to the interests and experiences of students, so I tend to think we would have a great conversation. We might not become BFFs, but perhaps productive professional acquaintances. (I know, I know, it’s a stretch on reality. Humor me.)

To meet with Dewey — a single encounter, maybe over dinner — I would need to travel to his location. He was on the faculty of the University of Chicago until 1904. Since I’m from Indiana, a trip to Chicago would be much shorter than going to New York, where he spent the majority of the rest of his life.

In 1904, even a short trip would have required a lot of planning. There’s a good chance a train would have made the trip from somewhere nearby in Indiana to Chicago, but getting to the train station from my home would take at least a day’s travel. Purchasing a train ticket on a teacher’s salary would be no easy feat, but let’s give me the benefit of the doubt that I could pay for the fare. The trip to Chicago, at top speeds of maybe fifty miles per hour, would take the better part of the day. Once there, I’d have to get on Dewey’s schedule. He was certainly in high demand and very busy so it could easily be a few days before we could sit down together, which would add room and board to my travel expenses. Then, it would take two days to get back home.

You can see how, with no cell phones, no email, no virtual assistants, or valet horse-parking services, getting access to great minds would have been quite difficult and costly back in the early 1900s. My single visit with Mr. Dewey would be next to impossible without forsaking my livelihood and financial stability.

THE PERKS OF LIVING IN A CONNECTED WORLD

Circumstances have certainly changed in the last century. When I think of the inspiring people out there now with whom I would love to have dinner, Rick Wormeli comes to mind. He’s an advocate of standards-based grading and a very active Twitter user. He may not be the next coming of John Dewey, but he’s a pretty bright guy who has significantly expanded my thinking about education.

Rick lives in Virginia and travels all over the world to speak about education. But to meet with me, he wouldn’t even need to leave his living room. On the spur of the moment, he and I could set up a Google Hangout video chat to discuss ideas for changing my outdated grading practices in my Spanish classes. If he was too busy to meet me via Google Hangout, I could catch him on Twitter, possibly during the #sblchat chat on Wednesdays between 9 and 10 p.m. Eastern time. If I had a pointed question and could articulate it in one hundred forty characters or less, he would probably shoot me a quick tweet. (He has in the past!)

Technology provides unbridled access to our students.

These days, we can turn to technology if we want to swap ideas with colleagues, connect with a faraway friend, or see a famous landmark in another country. Through social media we can stay in touch with people all over the globe. With Facebook, I keep up with friends in Mexico City as easily as I do with my parents half an hour away! Video chats via Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts all deliver the free “talking videophone”… one of my favorite futuristic features predicted by the movie Back to the Future Part II. Other communication apps, like Voxer and its walkie-talkie capability, help us connect faster and more easily than ever before. All you need is a smartphone, a computer, or a tablet, which many of us already have, and an Internet connection, something that’s readily available to many people around the globe.

Technology provides unbridled access to our students as well. They can video chat with experts about the topics they’re studying and talk face-to-face with the authors of books they’re reading. Video chats make places even more accessible as many facilities schedule free educational tours and demonstrations. For example, Greater Clark County Schools, a district in Southern Indiana near Louisville, Kentucky, treated students in all of its schools to an end-of-the-year, behind-the-scenes video tour of Churchill Downs. All it took was some scheduling by the school district.

In my own classroom, students leveraged this transformational technology to engage in a virtual cultural exchange with a class of English language learners in Valencia, Spain. What a huge, game-changing opportunity for my kids! Most of them have not traveled outside the United States, and many of them never will, and yet they have had the rich experience of talking with people from a different country and culture.

These previously impossible connections can revolutionize education — if teachers are willing to give them a shot. At conferences and across the blogosphere, I’ve seen countless references to collaborative tools and technology’s potential to bridge the miles between people and places. What I haven’t seen are many real-life examples of classes leveraging these tech tools. Why the lack of implementation? It’s not that the technology is brand new; social media, video chats, shared documents and the like have been around for years.

What’s missing, I believe, are the vision for the power of these new techniques and digital resources and the willingness to risk trying them. Instead of testing a new idea or tool, “paralysis by analysis” takes hold. We overanalyze new options, mull over all of the things we don’t know, think about how students will react, and then we don’t act! Let me challenge you to catch the vision and take the first step. Jump in, even if you don’t know exactly how it will turn out! Don’t let transformative and innovative learning ideas get left in your planning notebook where they won’t do you or your students any good.

<Chapter 2>
BOOST YOUR EFFICIENCY

I ran across a picture on Facebook the other day of Austin Powers, “International Man of Mystery” (played by Mike Myers). He was leaning toward the camera with a half smile on his face. The caption read: “Waiting until the morning to make photocopies for class? I, too, like to live dangerously.”

That is living dangerously, isn’t it? Sometimes you can walk right into the workroom with nobody in sight and churn out your copies in no time. But on the day you really need them, and need them now, a line wraps around the room. That’s when I used to head to the front office to borrow the copier — a trick not all of the teachers at my school know — but sometimes that copier is claimed, too!

Going the digital route is worth it simply for the time and effort we can save.

You can keep living dangerously and continue making photocopies. Or you could skip that drama and use technology to distribute all your files digitally. For me, that means creating documents, presentations, etc., with Google Apps and putting links to them on my class website. (I’ll explain more about that in a later chapter.) Even without the unique learning experiences technology offers, going the digital route is worth it simply for the time and effort we can save.

Sometimes, I think about what teaching would be like if I had begun my career twenty years earlier, back when the Apple IIGS computers were showing up in classrooms. Back then, I was still in elementary school, and we could play a handful of educational games (Math Blaster!) and create banners with Print Shop on those computers. Every couple of weeks we visited the computer lab. I can still remember barely holding in my excitement as our class walked in a single-file line toward that magical place. There, I played Oregon Trail, a favorite I still play online, and tried to survive the trek from Independence, Missouri, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, in a Conestoga wagon. If all went well, my digital family made the journey without dying of dysentery. (I didn’t know what dysentery was as a child, but I knew I didn’t want it!)

With all the computers sequestered out of the daily reach of students and teachers, their impact on the day-to-day activities of planning and creating lessons was minimal, at least at my school. Hand-written lessons, photocopied worksheets, and long hours correcting assignments and recording grades consumed teachers’ evenings and weekends.

My teaching experience has been completely different from that of my childhood teachers. Today’s technology allows me to work smarter and faster so my focus can stay on creating quality learning opportunities for my students. It allows me to be more productive and efficient so I’m not at school all hours of the day. For example:

BEFORE, taking a field trip could take weeks of planning and permission slip signing. A trip could take all day and would require coordination of chaperones, buses, and lunch. TODAY, we can create field trip experiences within a class period by participating in Skype video chats to virtually anywhere in the world.

BEFORE, creating teaching materials required good penmanship, maybe a little art skill, and lots of patience. TODAY, I can generate basic activities with Google Forms and Documents in a matter of minutes, or students can generate these activities on their own.

BEFORE, grading quizzes and tests required a red pen, a comfortable seat, and more than an hour of uninterrupted time. TODAY, simple assignments can be auto-graded with Google add-ons like Flubaroo. More complex assignments can be assessed and returned to students at any time of day, morning or night. As soon as you’re finished with their files on the Web, students can access them immediately.

BEFORE, finding a document to distribute to kids meant digging through filing cabinets, flipping through file folders, and finding the right document… assuming it got filed in the right place. TODAY, a quick keyword search through a database of digital documents can help you find a file in seconds.

BEFORE, all the books in your cabinets and on your shelves could yield great ideas — if you could only remember and track down the right book. TODAY, a search engine can find those ideas for you quickly, or colleagues on social media can suggest other ideas within minutes.

Why go digital? In part, because it makes your life easier! If you’re like me, you love to teach, but it’s not your entire identity. I have a family I love — a wonderful wife and three great kids. I have friends to keep up with and extended family to visit. Places to go, people to see, thing...