Toss the Traditional Textbook

The online article, "Toss the Traditional Textbook" does raise curiosity to most of us educators. Based on the article and some of the posted remarks after, it appears that Texas is not the only state experimenting with the idea of teachers posting resources and texts online through open source software programming. I clicked on the link to one of these sources, titled Connexions, and spent some time browsing through different modules that had been posted by educators. It is interesting to see the variety of lessons, materials, and activities that teachers have taken the time to publish for their students to access. I think this is a wonderful mode of instruction, however, I worry about my students who do not have regular access to a computer and the Internet. If students do not have daily and regular access to both computer and Internet, there will be little motivation to access course assignments. As a result, students will not complete the work and become frustrated. I'm just wondering how much accessibility students have to computers and the Internet at schools that are implementing use of open source software. How are students able to equally and consistently access the content needed in order to be an active participant?

What I do like about the concept of open source software, such as Connexions, is that teachers are able to individualize their instruction. I know in my own department, we have some very creative and innovative teachers. We love to share and collaborate our ideas for units. This type of instruction would easily allow us to access one anothers' lessons, activities, and content.

One important point that is mentioned in the article is that most change from textbooks to online material will not take place unless state officials and private investors become involved. This is very true and necessary for education to ever see change that implements more technology into today's classroom.