BFTP: May your trails be crooked

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post December 29, 2006.

"Inca Trail, Day 3," taken by Doug Johnson, November 2006.

A question from a children's book publisher

I get asked a lot of questions via e-mail that I am totally unqualified to answer. Of course my lack of knowledge or experience doesn't keep me from providing an opinion anyway. Hey, I'm a guy. What can I say?

Here's the latest:

We are publishers of books used in the primary grades to help children who are learning to read and write. Most of our books are 8-, 12-, and 16-page fiction and non fiction for the first three years of school.  We have been observing the move to all things digital and we have dabbled.  I am now working toward making all 174 of our English language books and 82 of our Spanish language books available as eBooks.

I have a question and would welcome your insight.  To over simplify everything, we have a choice of creating plain eBooks or enhanced eBooks.  I want to believe that teachers using eBooks for instruction will want plain eBooks--just the story, no bells and whistles.  At school I can picture a teacher using an eBook with a smartboard for a shared reading, just as she might use a big book.  And I can picture a small group of first graders, each with their own tablet, sitting on the floor with the teacher in a small group instruction.  Again, it seems to me that the best digital form of the book would be without enhancements.  Do you know if schools are thinking this way, or are they thinking they want all sorts of gimmicks and doodads?  By the way,  I think differently about books available as apps for tablets and computers that could be purchased by parents at home.  Maybe the heart of my thinking has to do with a difference between instruction that involves the teacher and independent reading and activity, whether at home or at school.

My response:

Your question about e-books is a good one. While I have reservations about books that "sing and dance,*" I am also staring to think that the expectation of some kind of multi-media or interactivity in children's ebooks is growing.

If the primary purpose of your books are for reading instruction, a simple text/graphics only version is probably the way to go. If they are meant to be sold directly to parents and kids for independent reading, the enhanced features are worth considering. You will also need to think about what e-book format to use or if you wish to publish each book as an app for Apple or Android.

How would you respond to this publisher?

Oh, I buy my grandsons books, e-books, and e-book apps that sing and dance - every format I can find.

* Does experiencing literature in highly interactive, multimedia formats actually lead to more reading? Or does it simply create a desire for more multimedia experiences? If the print book is vanilla ice cream, the electronic book that sings and dances is the whole hot fudge sundae with cherry and whipped cream. Who's going to want the plain vanilla anymore?

I certainly don't think it is intentional, but these e-books seem another step down the path leading toward a post-literate society. (The postliterate are those who can read, but chose to meet their primary information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming.) How ironic that products designed to develop reading may instead doom it.

Image source

Filtering survey responses

Here are the results of the 30-second survey on the efficacy of our Internet filtering. Comments following are interesting. I was pleased with the results - seemed we have things tuned pretty well.

Survey results of October 3-7, 2011:

Comments: (My comments in parentheses. - Doug)

student academic research options are limited for advanced placement courses (no further clarification)

Facebook ???? not much education use that I have observed.

How do I change the settings on the Spam filter to allow some regular newsmagazines such as Star Tribune and Christian Science Monitor to come into my regular mailbox? (Send me the email addresses that are being blocked and we can add them to our spam filter white list. - Doug)

I used to often use you tube clips in my class to show science demo's, clips of documentaries and other chem related clips. It was a fantastic easy to use resource. I can no longer use them due to them not loading. (Have you tried again this year? We've increased our bandwidth. YouTube is NOT blocked.)

You can still see obscene images through a Facebook. (Can you provide an example of this?)

I would like to see Facebook as a blocked website.  It is always a continued struggle trying to keep students off Facebook during class!

Facebook NEEDS to be blocked by our district.  It is a social network site NOT an educational site.  Teachers are not encouraged to use facebook due to potential problems that could arise so why would it be educational for our students?  Our students will be the first to tell you Facebook is a place to waste time when they are bored.  Let them Facebook at home.  If they dont have a computer at home then allow Facebook in the morning and after school ONLY. (The filter is not meant to be a classroom management tool. Any site on the Internet could be potentially distracting. I would be asking myself why your students are bored in the first place.)

I think we should be banning Youtube and Facebook as a searchable application. (Why?)

I have not been able to supplement social studies from the inter net

While helping a student find a picture of a peanut butter sandwich, we Googled images for peanut butter sandwiches. There were many to choose from, but I had to quickly scroll back through the photos before the student noticed an inappropriate picture. Also, while I was preparing a presentation about Sweden on my school computer, Googling images of Sweden included bare-breasted blondes! If a student were to do the same independently for a report, etc. from a school computer, the possibility exists for these images to appear. Should I be expecting that the school filter would eliminate the possibility. I thought it would. (My understanding is that the latest upgrade to our filter enforces the "safe search" in GoogleImages.)

Sometimes need You tube for short Art demonstration videos. Would like to be able to show those. (YouTube is not blocked.)

I am very pleased with our  filter.  I have been to other schools that were so limited that I couldn't even access Sesame Street clips on youtube.  I am happy to not have problems of that sort here.
 

After releasing the results of the survey to the staff, I received these follow-up comments:

While I completely understand the comments made regarding blocking Facebook, I have a concern in regards to my position if Facebook were blocked.  On bad weather days, KEYC's Weather Page, Mitch Keegan, and Mark Tarello post any and all weather information, including watches, warnings, schools that are beginning to close, undated forecasts and weather conditions, etc to their Facebook pages before the information is posted anywhere else.  I use those pages, along with 10+ other weather websites, to put together the most comprehensive information regarding weather.

and

A response to the "Facebook" comment...check out Mankato West Art Department on FB...I think if you dig through the almost 70 photo albums I have created of student work you will even find something of Brady's online :>)  I use this page and photobook reference ALL THE TIME in my classes.

The Facebook controversy will not be resolved for a time, but if I were a betting man, I would say that the site will continue to grow and be viewed as educationally valuable. Specific Facebook apps that help improve collaboration among students will keep coming out. An increasing number of teachers and administrators will use and become more comfortable with Facebook.

I am hearing the same arguments for blocking Facebook that I had for not giving kids ANY Internet access in the mid-90s. We'll get beyond it.