[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 33 | December 28, 2014 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Andrew Marcinek says, “There are a lot of misconceptions around the transition from textbooks into the world of digital content delivery. The biggest mistake schools can make is simply changing out one medium of delivery for another without ever assessing or changing the content or method of delivery. Simply, let’s take a 19th-century tool and place it on a 21st-century device. This is not the way to leverage the power of an iPad or, for that matter, any device you integrate in your classroom.
The Power of Open Educational Resources
I’ve been looking for ways to shake up the textbook model for several years. It started when I came to work at Burlington Public Schools in 2011 and, with Dennis Villano and Patrick Larkin, developed the Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative. The idea was bringing school districts together for three days to collaborate around curating and organizing digital content that could be used in various content areas. For three years, we held this free conference, and each year we faced challenges in getting this concept to take off. One of the biggest hurdles was time: for teaching, collecting, organizing, and delivering digital content”.