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 The textbook is usually designed as the one and only source of information, but can become outdated in just a few years (thanks to the national administrations, mainly).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