I’ve got to say, I’m impressed with the reaction to your post. I was going to post earlier but I’m actually glad I waited. So here goes.

The Internet will only become a larger part of our lives, whether you like it or not. Our responsibility as educators, notice I say educators not teachers, is to prepare our students, we’d all agree on that. But, if we introduce the skills (no matter the discipline) we want students to learn with traditional methods, our students will lose interest. They are growing up in a world of constant connectivity. Say what you will about this, that’s the way it is. The idea behind my post in response to “Joe’s Non-Netbook” was to highlight the fact that learning without a textbook and the skills we want them to learn go hand in hand.

If we as educators determine the core skills that we want our students to master, we can use any number of resources, we are not tied to the textbook.

As for history, we are trying to engage our students in a scholarly dialog. If we present them with multimedia (video, maps, art, charts etc.) as well as several text websites that are dedicated to a certain topic but have slight differences, the class can then determine those differences on their own not having to rely upon a textbook to tell them. As for the scholarly perspective, you can post two JSTOR articles from different historians and have the students debate the arguments and then write analytical responses on their blogs about the core differences in the two articles.

Textbook or no textbook, the skills we want our students to learn are still the same: be able to think and write like a historian. If we want to do justice to our students and keep them interested, we must acknowledge that our students consume information differently. If we completely ignore that fact we are doing them a disservice. While the top 10% of the class can understand the argument by simply reading a textbook, we are missing out on the 90% who need audio or visuals that are NOT available in a textbook. Yes, this approach will take some extra time and planning to post all the resources on-line ahead of time but the benefit for the entire class is well worth the effort.

As for other disciplines like math. Yes, math is different but that doesn’t mean that students can only learn from a textbook. Dan Meyer, a math teacher in California proves this very convincingly. Here are two examples of what he does with his class: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=213 and http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=440

To sum up, textbooks not only cost a great deal of money but they cost our students’ potential to learn. With a different approach to how we educate our students and using the plethora of multimedia and text resources available on-line, we are not only saving money but doing a great deal of good in helping to keep our students interested and wanting to learn the skills we are “teaching”.

Ok, I’m done. Sorry for the rant.

All good points. I also assign journal articles in limited cases and my students have access to JSTOR, which makes it very easy. My students also have access to ProQuest which is another dynamite database that offers essays and book reviews from thousands of popular magazines and scholarly publications. The Internet does force instructors to spend much more time on teaching students to judge individual sites, but it seems to me that this is our responsibility. As for copying…well…I do all of that myself. It does involve more time, but it goes with the territory. Thanks again.

An example: last year I wanted my Public History students to read two chapters in “Confederates in the Attic.” I didn’t want to require the class to buy a copy as money is sometimes tight for some of my students. I decided to reserve a copy of the book in the library and make a Xerox of the two required chapters so there would be more than the single copy available.

Unfortunately I was refused permission to place the copied chapters on reserve. One copied chapter was fine. So was reserving the entire book. But putting two chapters on reserve violated some invisible line. I ended up putting one copy of the book on reserve and loaning the Xeroxed chapters (and my own copy of the book) to my students myself. Fortunately it was a smallish class. A few bought the book (and loved it), but I am sure a few of my less-motivated students barely read it because the reserve copy was checked out.

There are work-arounds. In the past I’ve printed copies of short articles on my printer at home. I can download pdf copies of relevant articles from JSTOR and post them on Blackboard for my classes. I’ve even sat and scanned in articles unavailable online as pdfs and made them into pdfs myself. Fortunately I have the time and ability that I can make outside readings this way. But what of the new professor with a full class load, or the high school teacher with a full plate of classes and afterschool duties, or the harried adjunct teaching several classes at different schools?

Of course there is also the “this is the book the department uses, so you’re using it.” That’s how I picked the book for my survey classes.

One final note: I prefer using articles from good history journals rather than material from the internet because I know they’ve gone through peer review. I have used some readings from the internet in the past, including several very good pieces that you’ve linked on this site. But I would rather use an article that has already been through some review by others in my field than 90% of what I see for free on the web. Having said that, I know there is some very good material out there. History Matters and Gilder-Lehrman have wonderful resources. However, for an upper division college class you can’t beat a good professional journal for readings….

I was right; Euler’s papers are online:

http://math.dartmouth.edu/~euler/

Why they are at Dartmouth is beyond me.

Yes, I couldn’t agree more. All of these are things that I need to learn. That’s what makes this so exciting to me.

James,

No need to apologize. That said, I don’t think you have to give up your status as a textbook author to think about how the Internet might broaden your ability to introduce the subject of math. Thanks again for your comments.

Keying from your comment… “In short, they are both consumers and producers of history”…

I think we also need to look at the digital space as a new environment in which traditional styles of reading and writing are different. Just as much as we have a need for a course in composition or, perhaps, creative writing, as the Web continually develops as a hub for communication and education, we need to start looking at teaching a course in digital literacy.

Kevin, it is entirely possible that my status as a textbook author has colored my thinking. I’m not going to apologize for that

James,

I have to admit that I am also much more comfortable with a standard text, but again I have to wonder if that is because it’s always been the standard approach. It seems to me that what it comes down to is how we, as teachers, conceive of our courses. What is it that we are trying to teach? You are absolutely correct in pointing out that the teacher can always supplement a text and teach things like historical perspective and critical analysis. However, the Internet has placed our students in a situation where they can easily access huge amounts of primary and secondary sources and shape that information into their own interpretation. In short, they are both consumers and producers of history. It seems to me that this presents a fundamental shift in how we think of our subject. I am the first to admit that this is not an easy transition, but it is here to stay and the rewards are too great to be ignored.

You keep coming back with the need for the text, but what I’ve learned is that the Internet offers everything that a textbook can provide. Consider what Steve Mintz has done at Digital History. Here you have a basic text that students can use as a foundation with easy access to the rest of the site’s digital resources. I think of this site as the equivalent of a foundational text: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

The undeniable thing that the “new media”brings to the table is searchability. Several years ago I was teaching a grad math course here at Michigan, and someone asked a question about the history of a certain topic we were discussing. I didn’t know the answer, but at our next meeting one student (from India) had Googled the subject enough to resolve the question. That was something of an eye-opener for me.

A real problem with doing math on the Web is notation—not all browsers support it, or support it well. There is a sizeable group working to fix that.