The new digital textbook
How will the increasing digital education develop in the future? Will there still be textbooks? What will they look like? How will students learn in the future? What role will the teachers have? These are questions that concern us teachers. In this article I would like to take a closer look at the future of textbooks.
The typical textbook
Digitization or not, but textbooks are still made of paper and cardboard. Of course, the content has been modernized, today there are comics, photos, lots of color and a modern layout, many also include a CD or a website with extra materials, but the concept is still as ever, the teacher explains, the students read and solve exercises, the teacher corrects etc. The topics in the textbook are given and depending on the teachers creativity, a worksheet or a text is added. Of course we try to individualize our content, but in general it is limited to giving the fast a few extra exercises and the slow ones can skip one. The exercises require a lot of paper, which either has to edit the teacher in hours of work or which is corrected together with the pupils in valuable teaching time.
The digital flexible textbook: Different ways to the same goal
With new digital possibilities, a completely new learning experience is possible. Of course, it will need a goal or result in the future, which should be worked on and should be reached by many students as possible. In my case as a German teacher as a foreign language, the goal at the end of the 6th grade is the level A2 exam “Auf dem Weg zum Sprachdiplom”. This means that the 18 vocabulary areas required for this exam are treated several times, during the 1st through 6th grade. Then there are the necessary grammar skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. With the new digital approach, I have now greater flexibility in the choice of topics. If my German learners come from Peru they are probably more interested in why a group of Austrians and Germans founded a colony in the middle of the Peruvian jungle and still speak some German there. A class in the south of Argentina is probably very interested in what German scientists have contributed to glacier research. Even learners of German in Europe will be more motivated if they can read a text about their own city. Localization motivates the learners. In some countries there are different editions of the same teaching material, adapted to different federal states. With the digitization the adaptation will continue and does not need much effort.
The new role of the students
Pupils are consumers in much of their time they get teached. They sit and listen and reproduce. Rarely learners do exercises for others. But with the didaktis exercise framework (DEF) that would be very easy. For example, a new text about my city has been read. There is a new vocabulary: A group of students copies the unfamiliar vocabulary and makes an exercise out of it (for example multiple choice, gap text, puzzles, etc.). With the DEF they do it within minutes and put the exercise online. A second group deals with the grammar of the text and also makes online exercises out of it. The students become producers of their own content. The online exercises will all be solved later. This creates a social dynamic, because everyone wants to know what the others have done.
The individualization for learners can be brought to completely new levels. At the beginning of the school year, students do an online test that can be assigned to a specific type of learner. For example, rather visual or rather auditory, learning by doing or rather intelectual etc. the results will be saved and in the future the computer will select exercises specifically tailored to this type of learner so that the learners can achieve rapid success and their motivation remains high. Gradually, the students get more difficult exercises until they master the subject. Since learners solve most of the exercises online, they also have an immediate correction to their answer: they can improve faster.
The new teacher’s role
The biggest positive change for teachers is the correction effort. The online exercises are self-correcting. Boring monotonous corrections of worksheets are eliminated. Of course, they will have to correct even longer, handwritten texts in the future, but this work is far more interesting and demanding than the correction of right or wrong. A new area will be the analysis of the results of its class. The teacher must be able to interpret the statistics of the online exercises, possibly submit exercises himself either individually or for the whole class. Then the teacher becomes a producer again: he has to prepare topics that have a local relevance and also fit into the curriculum. As the DEF grows, educators have access to a growing stock of material.
Looking to the future
Self-correcting online exercises are already available today, but they are time-consuming and often require informatics expertise. The didaktis exercise framework still exists as a concept, but it is intended to radically simplify the process of creating and producing online exercises. Will the textbooks disappear with it? No, certainly not, but they will look different. A German book may only be a booklet, where only a few texts, the grammar and a few basic exercises are in it. The rest is solved with individualized exercises on the computer. Will teachers of the publishing house run out of work? This won’t happen either, schools and teachers will not be able to develop all the content themselves in the future. However, the educational publishers will offer more digital exercises.
The didaktis exercise framework should be free and the code should be under an opensource license, anyone who wants can develop more features. Nevertheless opensource is not necessarily free. Educational publishers, schools or individuals can offer paid content. We are currently looking for publishers, companies, schools or other sponsors to help develop the core functions of DEF. Interested people are welcome to contact me: miwalder@gmail.com.