Reply to Why oh why don't schools use textbooks anymore??

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Reply to "Why oh why don't schools use textbooks anymore??"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DCPS provides some textbooks in hard copy and digital form. The most up-to-date ones are those for AP courses as those have gone through teacher feedback and selection processes over the past 5 years with dedicated funding and support from the DCPS Office of Teaching and Learning. The College Board approves syllabi for AP courses and textbooks are required to be part of the course design, often because the higher-level content requires an in-depth text resource to supplement the use of additional texts used by the teacher. For non-AP courses, it varies.

In ELA, DCPS purchases many books and novels for schools to use in alignment to the curriculum which was created and is revised each year through work by central staff curriculum writers working with DCPS teachers as curriculum writing fellows. With the shifts of the Common Core State Standards, there's a focus on reading more texts aligned to a particular topic or theme (e.g., Rocks and Minerals, People Who Persevere, the Civil Rights Movement) to build students' background knowledge rather than topics scattered across a broader spectrum of different topics. Additionally, text selection tries to provide a better balance of "windows and mirrors," that is, texts that provide windows into the lives of people that are different from students as well as texts that more closely mirror students' own identities, lives, and experiences. Old ELA mainstays like the Norton Anthology are certainly useful, but they tend to skew toward a more traditional Western canon, so the texts are chosen more individually to fit the needs of the unit design. There are tradeoffs to that decision, for sure, but the district has also tried to make things easier for schools by publishing compilations of all the texts needed for each grade level. Funding cuts to central have meant that these are not necessarily provided to every school every year, and some DCPS schools opt out of using the centrally designed ELA curriculum and don't use those resources.

For social studies, there are still hard copy textbooks, but they were last formally adopted in 2007 following the last updating of the DC social studies standards in 2006. Given the adoption being 15 years ago, the hardcover textbooks are not used by many teachers, though they are still available for schools to order from the DCPS warehouse. Given the age of some of these books, social studies teachers also have access to an online textbook tool called the Discovery Education Techbook. In addition to the "core interactive text" (what you'd find in a traditional textbook), the Techbook includes many more images, maps, interactives, and video clips, along with providing features to support students accessing the text more easily (e.g., lowering the reading level of a passage, defining words, reading the text aloud, or translating into Spanish). The Techbook was piloted in 5 schools back in 2013 and given the positive feedback from teachers, gradually expanded to other schools as well. The DCPS social studies curriculum pulls from the Techbook but also a wide variety of primary and secondary source documents freely available online known as OER (Open Educational Resources). As the DC social studies standards are now being updated by OSSE, it's likely there will be an update to textbooks and other class resources sometime in the next few years.

For science, teachers also have access to the Discovery Education Techbook which started being used at the same time as the social studies version. Students can access Techbook via Clever, so that would be a good place to look for more information about social studies and science content. Science teachers also have access to an online curriculum resource called STEMscopes. In math, DCPS has adopted the Eureka curriculum which includes workbooks as others have noted. Like any other resource, there are tradeoffs to using single textbooks vs. a curated curriculum with other sources. Textbooks and curriculum can be used with varying degrees of fidelity and it's possible to use either to positive effect, or for them to not be used well. If you have questions about the materials your kids are bringing home, it's probably best to start with some questions to their teacher and go from there. It's also possible that some teachers aren't necessarily aware of all the resources they are able to take advantage of using.   [/quote]
+1000
This is what all these people DO NOT UNDERSTAND.  Their interaction with teaching materials, period, and educational technology is extremely limited and somehow just understand one very didactic way to teach- and then they write things Iike "Why can't we have textbooks like the old days..." They actually think there is a binary situation of paper- or there's a computer screen with videos and games.  They've never heard of OERs or open sourced materials.  They've never used an LMS or interactive programs. 
Pages of informational threads do  not dissuade some people who are stuck in time. But, thanks for making a good effort here. [/quote]

You underestimate the complainants here.  I’ve worked for an LMS vendor, and I still strongly believe that a textbook is necessary, if not sufficient.

We get the value of hands on, interactive, digital, whatever lessons, but we are telling you the experience of our children, who don’t grasp the scope of a subject in a coherent way, and who are online wayyyy to much for the health of their eyes and brains.[/quote]

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