10.02.17
www.thebookseller.com
EDUCATION NEWS
19
the concept of a textbook ceases to have any meaning and publishing becomes more about offering a service than a product—and this is the future that Pearson has tried to embrace. Regularly updated, interactive content, purpose-built for digital and mobile, is paid for by subscription. Success is dependent on the quality of the training teachers receive, as well as its user interface. Software helps the teacher plan as much as it helps them to teach the curriculum. While there are some schools that have gone almost wholly digital, there are others where transition is represented by the arrival of costly—and rudimentary— electronic whiteboards. In contrast to the glamour of the
BETT Show (24th–27th January), most schools fall somewhere in the middle; by design or circumstance digital co-exists with print and paid- for content often has to compete with resources created or shared by teachers themselves via social media. Access to reliable devices may be as important as content. The equivalent of a digital textbook may be the resources that are saved and shared online via platforms such as Moodle or Firefly. State schools are also facing cuts of £3bn over four years, according to National Audit Office figures. “In the US, an entire school
district can decide to go digital and it’s big enough to encourage some of the key players to start digitising their content,” says Burgess. “Here, even a multischool academy chain wouldn’t be big enough.”
We are seeing very few digital textbooks. What we do see gaining a reasonable amount of traction are platforms that include elements of them
‘‘ GEORGE BURGESS C.E.O. GOJIMO
Others agree that there is a digital lag in the UK. “How is transition going? Slowly, but I still think it is a significant change,” said Charley Darbishire, m.d. and founder of EdTech startup Educake, which this year won the BETT Award for Secondary Digital Content. “Teachers are under a lot of pressure. They don’t have the luxury to test things to see if they work—if they don’t, they still have a class to teach. Most of the things we see aren’t designed with teachers’ and their students’ needs in mind. What’s going to push digital are products built for teachers.” Educake was built from scratch as
a digital product and teachers have been involved in its development since its inception. Sheffield-based Twinkl is another teacher-led resource. (See panel, right.) Meanwhile, the transition to
digital can seem a long way off in some schools. “We don’t really use any textbooks or digital materials supplied by publishers,” says Kate McCabe, head of the English and Media faculty at St Gregory the Great Catholic School in Oxford.
“I create most of the resources for the department and adapt things shared on Twitter. It helps me to get my head around the new specifications and make sure students have challenging material. I know in our school, and in many with such budget cuts, technology is poor—it is [PowerPoint] and having students write it down, a move back to more didactic methods. It saves paper, saves time and keeps students working.” “My library is 100% digital,” says Rob Butler, a deputy head and education blogger at the other end of the spectrum. “I make my own resources. I don’t use any textbooks and instead use PowerPoint and multimedia to support my teaching. I do print worksheets out, because students need to write. I have copies of digital textbooks I use for planning, but not with students.” Duffy is confident that Pearson will thrive. “Teachers have always created their own materials alongside using published resources, whether print or online. What we offer to enhance and support these are high-quality resources that are carefully structured and sequenced, helping teachers to save time and focus on the needs of students.” Others think it may be tougher.
“Pearson has been trying to transform itself, but it’s going to be tough,” says Darbishire. “You have to try to change everyone’s ideas about how things are created and what the end result is. That isn’t easy.” Pearson also needs to support its UK publishing business. In the autumn Back to School season, booksellers complained of difficulties getting hold of Pearson texts. Pearson told The Bookseller: “Following the UK implementation of new systems at Pearson, some of our customers did experience issues with the late arrival of orders in the autumn term. We wrote to them at the time to apologise for any inconvenience and worked as hard as possible to quickly address the problem.”
TOP OF THE CLASS: SIX EDTECH
SUCCESS STORIES
BBC Bitesize may not be new and it is certainly not trendy, but its free online study support resources for school-age students in the UK remain very popular.
MyMaths is a primary and secondary subscription-based mathematics website owned by Oxford University Press. For more than 10 years it has given teachers access to a range of ready-made lesson plans and online homework tasks that students can access at home.
Twinkl is an award-winning subscription website that provides teacher-created and teacher-checked resources for its growing community of nurseries and schools.
Another OUP service, Kerboodle, works alongside course textbooks to help teachers integrate digital resources into their classroom.
Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn any subject.
Show My Homework is a platform for teachers to set, mark and manage homework for students.
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