Curator-Farmer of "The Dark Side of Textbooks"

Here you can find the resources that we have used on the practice of this week called "The dark side of textbooks".

We have organiced them using Pearltrees, and also we wrote all theorethical references below (in APA style):

• Adell,J. (2011, July 18) "lecturas sobre libros de texto" (post). Retrieved March 4, 2014 from http://elbonia.cent.uji.es/jordi/2011/07/18/lecturas-sobre-libros-de-texto/

• Adell,J. (2012, March 4) "Libros de texto electrónicos: peras al olmo" (post).Retrieved March 5, 2014 from http://elbonia.cent.uji.es/jordi/2012/03/04/libros-de-texto-electronicos-peras-al-olmo/

• Anele (2013). "Informes" (webpage). Retrieved March 7, 2014 from http://anele.org/

• Customer magnetism, digital marketing agency (n.d) "What is an infographic" Retrieved March 4,2014 from http://www.customermagnetism.com/infographics/what-is-an-infographic/

• Desconocido (2011, February 3) "La venta de libros escolares en España deja muchos millones de ganancias (pasen y vean quienes se los embolsan)" (post)Retrieved March 5, 2014 from http://cuadernodetrabajo.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/la-venta-de-libros-escolares-en-espana-deja-muchos-millones-de-ganancia-pasen-y-vean-quienes-se-los-embolsan/

• Gil, M. (2014, February 26) "Venta digital de libros de texto" (post). Retrieved March 5,  2014 from http://antinomiaslibro.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/libros-texto/

• Rapp, David (2008,November/December) "The End of Textbooks?" (webpage). Retrieved March 4, 2014 from http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750551

• Tan,K. (2013) "20+Tools to create your own infographics" (webpage). Retrieved March 4, 2014 from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/infographic-tools/

• Wikipedia (2014, February 19) "Textbook" (webpage). Retrieved March 3, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook

By the Curator-Farmer of this week: Ana de Lara Torrente

Analyzing the Dark Side of Textbooks.

If you visit different classrooms, you probably notice that most of the teachers use a standard textbook. The reasons for this are many, depending on the design of the curriculum, the directives of the political administration, the level of competence on the part of teachers…etc. Textbooks can provide several advantages in the classroom: they could be helpful for beginning teachers and could provide organized units of work; a textbook gives plans and lessons; everything is spelled out. As good as they may appear on the surface, textbooks do have some limitations.

Usually textbooks fail to stimulate student interest. It is not unusual to refuse textbooks because they are large collections of data, for large amounts of students. Scholars may find it difficult to understand the relevance of so much useless information to their day-to-day lives. The textbook is usually designed as the one and only source of information, but can become outdated in just a few years (thanks to the national administrations, mainly). They are expensive, easily damaged, heavy and uncomfortable to carry around…. Textbooks are a hot topic every few years: with the entry of a new government, usually a renewal of education plans happens, and textbooks are replaced by law (juicy business for the big publishers!!). This is a huge economic burden for families, who have no reasonable alternative: buying textbooks is compulsory.

One of the first concepts for our infography

So for this “Dark Side of Textbooks” we decided to do an infographic about those issues. We doubt between the different formats that we could choose to represent this concept, but in the end decided to use an infographic. It is a static visual scheme, therefore it's nothing "dynamic" and for some people does not have the same appeal as, for example, a video. Best part of the activity was the design of the infographic and the search for information to fill it, and the very best moment was when we found a concept that could easily be used and was pretty original, as is using the cover of the album "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. Obviously, the infographic can lose its strength if you are not learned about this cover, which is a cultural icon of our society like, e.g. the “Abbey Road” cover from The Beatles or the Campbell's soup cans  pictures from Andy Warhol.

The problems were the usual (which we also have in other subjects). As we are a large number of people is difficult to accommodate the schedules and preferences for work in group. And sometimes there are disagreements about how to perform the work or the role of each member. So one thing we need to constantly improve for the next weeks is integration and teamwork. Also, we should keep our originality and imagination when it comes to homework and not get carried away by the "easy way" when to perform it, even if it means we go the extra mile.

Textbooks Workcloud -so trendy!

This topic is related with almost all of the subjects in this course and degree. As textbooks doesn't take students' background knowledge into account, teachers does not adapt lessons to the interests and capacities of students. Psychology, sociology, scholar organization and ITCs…etc. are necessary for us to be able to get an optimal environment for teaching/learning without blindy following a textbook. We must be able to create our own personal textbooks, but mainly in our minds, with our knowledge, tailored to each situation.

In conclusion, we have learnt that textbooks (and any of its alternatives such as websites, digital encyclopaedias, and so on) are only as good as the educator who uses it: is just one tool, and perhaps a very relevant one. Sometimes, teachers over-rely on textbooks and don't consider other resources for their classroom. The teacher should not become a mere reader of knowledge written by others. No textbook is perfect, but it is one powerful resource for you to use wisely as a guidebook, or like a "storyboard". The teacher should not become a mere reader of knowledge written by others.Even a bad example can become something we learn a lesson from. As future teachers, we'll need to make many decisions, and one of those is if and how we want to use the textbook.

Analyst: Javier Marín Garcerán

★ Star ★ : "The Dark Side of Textbooks"

We decided to do an infographic, since is a powerful visual format that involves great creativity and is strongly related to ICTs.

Besides, there are a lot of benefits of using this scheme:

• 90% of information that comes to the brains is visual.

• 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plan text.

Related to our infographic, I would like to remark that we use an original design, inspired by one of the most famous album covers of Pink Floyd: "The Dark Side of the Moon".

You can appreciate the similarity between them:

All the data is collected from ANELE (Asociación Nacional de Editores de Libros y Material de Enseñanza).We put all the disadvantages commonly known classified in fields:

Economical:

Textbooks have been considerated for so many years as a necessary and essential tool for teachers, and editorials have obseved that, so that's the reason why textbook have become in a real huge business.

In fact, every year since economic crisit started, editorials have earned more than 800 millions of Euros in our country.

The most obvious problem is the expenditure for the families. In Spain, a family has to pay more than 100€ per child and year, just in textbooks, and not all can afford them. Another problem is Editorials prevent families from reuse textbooks.

Ideological:

Most of the best known editorials are owned by the Catholic Church, and normally goes according to the political party that governs in that moment, so it is obvious that textbooks have an ideological content. The problem with this is that children will be strong affected by this and won't let them to think by themselves, indoctrinating them in some way, without any possibility of know different points of view or contrast information, in order to have an own conclusion or opinion.

Educational:

It's common to see how textbooks present the content in a decontextualized and isolated way.

Many of the practices of teaching/learning which imposes the use of textbooks are very outdated and systematical: It consists in an exposition of the unit, comprehension, exercises and memorization.

Another problem related to textbooks is that they don't take into account the student diversity in the classroom.

Epistemological:

The textbook is the only source of true knowledge and, therefore, does not contribute to develop the real knowlede that must have a child; it doesn't allow children to look for another resources or alternatives.

Children read those books as they were a bible, doing that we are transmitting them, the feeling that they must believe everything that they read.

Textbooks don't offer the opportunity to create knowledge, while it would be better for them to search information and know how to discriminate it.

De-professionalization:

Editorials decide the content of the books, making curricular concretions, choose certain pedagogical theories and didactics, motivating most of them for business and influenced in the government learning politics. So actually, teachers don't choose the contents that transmit to their pupils.

According to this: the editorials are who really decide learning on the children. then, why are we sutdying a degree to become teachers? It would be enough just knowing to read.

Alternative to the textbooks:

Nowadays we live in a technological society and we think it is important to develop these skills in the classroom so, the teacher would have to get involved into teaching children how to get on that kind of world. They must learn to look for information and know how to contrast sources.

As an alternative tool we suggest ICTs, in order to use the imagination, and their experience to get children have curiosity, and motivate them. It's also important the possibility that the teacher could decide which are the correct method and manner for the teaching/learning process.

For that reason, we can metion another kind of alternatives, where teachers upload their own notes or units, and can actualize it as long as they desire, because of they are not static:

-Teacher's notes

-Blogs

-Sites

-Digital platforms

-Digital portfolios

Despite all of that, I would want to remark that we are not against textbooks: they are neither good nor bad, it's just the way we use it. Textbooks can help to the creation and learning but can also become a tool that completely degrades and distorts the teaching.

We could combine a good textbook, using it in a good way, with another kind of material or resources, previously mentioned. One of the most important things for an effective education is to know what knowledge the pupils start with. From there, the teacher can adequate the contens to the children or even modify it if it's necessary.

Finally, I would like you to take into account the effort that entails this kind of work. We tried to make it, as professional and original as we could, and it took a long time, becuase we started from scratch. (even the graphics were created by ourselves!)

Star: Alicia del Carmen Lova Ortiz

Facilitators' work this week. "The Dark Side of Texbooks"

This week our group has had two facilitators, Mariano and Irene.

Our experience as facilitators of this group during this week has been quite interesting. Our group has been working in a project called “The dark side of the textbooks”. We decided to divide the group to look for information individually because in that way we could get more resources than doing that in peers or with the whole group. We also decided to divide the articles that were uploaded to virtual classroom by the teacher. Each person had to read only an article and not all of them, summarize it and if the information was in Spanish, this person had to translate it into English.

After this process, when we had got the whole information, each person had to explain it to our group. And all together we started to do the infography which was one of the options that we had for doing our project on “The dark side of textbooks”.

Our conclusions once we have finished our role of this week, we have realized that to do a good presentation, it is important to create a solid group of work; it is also important that the components interact each other to express their own opinions; we have to have the aim object of the practice clear and we have to know how to deal all the problems that could appear in that kind of works. So we think that this week some components haven’t followed all these rules, so the project was hard to do because some of the components worked more than others, and this has influenced us a lot.

Facilitators: Mariano Castillo & Irene Martínez

I Am The Translator In "The Dark Side of Textbooks"

This week I am the translator, so I have collected the five most important terms that has been learnt on the week, and also I have to include the definition of each concept.

The five terms that I have selected are the following:

1.Textbook or course book : Manual of instructions presents in all fields of study. Its production depends on the demands of educational institutions. Textbooks can appreciate them in printed format and even today there are eBooks (electronic books). It is a teaching tools, in many cases the content of the textbook is based on the notes of a course.

2.Information graphics or infographics: Graphic visual representations. These may be related to information, data or knowledge. It aims to present complex information quickly and clearly. The use of graphics is useful for better vision system. This may be related to data visualization, information design, or information architecture.

3.Editorial: A type of company that is responsible for the publication and distribution of writings. The edition of the book does not include the activity of circulating the information available to the general public (distribution). In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.

4. De-professionalization: It is a process in which the range and professional competence are disqualified. It aims to gradually reduce and eliminate the quality and qualities that characterize a professional training and career university. De-professionalization provokes teachers to lose autonomy and creativity. In addition, this leads to a didactic immobility.

5. Epistemology: It is the branch of philosophy whose object of study is knowledge. As a theory of knowledge, it is concerned with issues such as the historical, psychological and sociological circumstances that lead to the attainment of knowledge. This also meant a clear and precise definition of the epistemic (for example truth, objectivity, reality concepts or justification.)

We have made ​​an infographic related to textbook. In this graph we have included some points which I have selected the most difficult to understand (editorial, de-professionalization, epistemology) .I hope that these terms will be helpful to everyone, because they are necessary to understand our work of this week. 

Natalia Martinez Alcázar

Journalist's work this week.

This week we've been working about the bad side of text books in schools. What we have done is firtsly to study some of the editorials here in Spain in order to see  how do they work and then we analyze how do teachers use them, which is the real main objective of this. Secondly we decided what about work was going to talk about, I mean, the parts it is going to have. And lastly we decided how will we present it, this time, in an infographic.

We decided what type of infographic we were going to present to our classmates in class so that they could understand our point of view about the bad side of text books.

This is some photos of us working hard in this practice which we've enjoyed a lot.

And this is our star this week, Alicia, exposing this mornig.

This week I've comented in Education Rush hour's blog because I liked so much their presentation:  http://educationalrushhour.blogspot.com.es/  

Also I have discovered a very interesting blog about education which I loved: 

http://english4childrentoday.blogspot.com.es/

The Dark Side Of Textbooks Infography

Here is the final design of our infography about "The Dark Side of Textbooks".

 

Please view at full resolution to appreciate the details. Download the infography from https://www.dropbox.com/s/atdtv4vd9syz0ko/THE%20DARK%20SIDE%20OF%20TEXTBOOKS.jpg

As a bonus, here you have a picture of one of the first sketches of our infographic. The concept was mostly clear from the beggining, but you can see the different changes that has developed from the initial ideas to the final outcome.

And the winner is.....Infographics!

For the practice about "The Dark Side of Textbooks" we decided to do an infographic. Infographics are a powerful visual format that involves great creativity and is strongly related to ICTs. To understand better the subject and what are the benefits of using this scheme, take a look at this infographic about infographics:

www.zabisco.com

Also, check out this Spanish website with useful information about Social Media and ICT´s, using infographics mainly.

http://ticsyformacion.com/

We are doing a special infographics for "The Darks Side of Texbooks" issue, and we believe we have found an original way to represent it, using a pop culture icon ..... so, stay tuned!