According to the Columbus Dispatch, some Democratic legislators in state of Ohio are pursuing mandatory e-textbooks for college students. The hope is that it will reduce the cost of textbooks for college students by as much as 50%. Should save a lot of trees and money on chiropractor bills, as well.

Here Comes GORT

No, I'm not talking about the reading test. I'm talking about the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Robotics is seen by many experts in technology as the next major technological field to experience explosive growth. Bill Gates even predicts one day we will even have our own personal robots.

What does that have to do with teaching? Plenty. Right now there are tremendous resources available for teaching robotics in the classroom and/or as an extra curricular activity. Though there are several robot products out there, I prefer the Lego Mindstorms NXT. They can be built in enormous ways without using any tools, they use a sophisticated software program, and there are quite a few high quality resources to assist you in teaching them. However, they are quite an investment. But after using them for over two years, I believe they are still well worth it.

Not only have I used them in teaching, but I am also developing tools to help teachers be able to learn more about robots and use robots in the classroom. Right now I am working on a Web Quest for using robots.

For more infomation on materials for teaching robotics visit the Robot Academy website.

Video in the Classroom?

Video in teaching? Aren't we trying to stop kids from watching too much TV? This is more than merely watching TV. Video augmentation means using video to supplement your teaching.

This can be done several ways, such as:

1. Using professionallly-made video clips in the beginning of a lesson as an antecedent or anticipatory set (hook). This gives students a quick visual background knowledge before starting the lesson.
2. Using a teacher-created video of a lesson to allow for student review. Many times students get home and forget how to do the skills they've learned from the lesson that was taught earlier that day. If that lesson was video-recorded and posted on the teacher's website or a video posting site, students could review the lesson at home.
3. Using video as a class or homework assignment. Students could create a video presentation instead of a doing a book report. This will allow them to not only to summarize a story, but be creative and learn video production and editing skills.

More on digital textbooks

ABC has a very comprehensive story on the Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan to switch to digital textbooks. For those into ed tech, it is a story to follow.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Economy/story?id=7827997&page=1

Are Textbooks Going the Way of 8 Track Tapes

Interestingly enough mostly reported in foreign newspapers, Gov. Schwarzenegger of California is seriously thinking about doing away with textbooks in high schools in order to cut costs in the long run. Personally, I like this idea. Can you imagine all the trees we can save? However, not everyone is for the idea, there is thing called accessibility to content that has to be worked out.

Here is the story link:
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=296801&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

I am following this story closely, so look for updates if interested.