A Coursebook Designed by Me
"All I can say is that my particular field; EFL/ESL the "hobbyists" are light years ahead of the professionals in terms of quality and innovation. English language teaching books have barely come to to terms with the 80’s, let alone the twenty first century." (– emphasis mine. — Teacherdude, Are you a digital narcassist?)
Hobbyists vs. Professionals. Interesting. Why is this happening? Could it be that big publishers have just lost touch with what their market wants? Could it be that big publishers — professionals– have tried to deploy solutions that they think we need? (In many cases people buy stuff they want…not what they need.)
There are a lot of reasons why course books fall behind so quickly, and actually become irrelevant to their target market, but one big reason is very similar to why I hate buying computers: the moment you take it home, your fancy high-tech toy begins to age, and a week or month later there’s a new and better one on the market.
Course books are very similar. They age quickly, and when publishers or English schools don’t notice, or are just two lazy to upgrade…the results are downright foolish end-user experiences. Think Memo writing exercises. (Many companies just use email today.) Fax preparation - yes, faxes are still used today, but again: email is rapidly rising to take that over too (scanning documents etc.) Handling telephone calls…yes….yes…that is still done today, and lots…but VOIP communication solutions between businesses are growing pretty darn quick, and I can promise you that it’ll be many more years down the road (if ever) before you see a unit about how to prepare for a Skype conference in your ESL coursebook.
The point is that normal publishing options are just too slow for the rapid changes going on around us. I wonder if prosumerisim has an option here. (Prosumer is the blurring of the traditional roles of producer and consumer, where the two become deeply involved in the production/consumption process.) Look at Lego, as an example. Lego still sells great packages of predesigned things for you to build, but they have also begun opening the door for their users to tell them what they want to build…and are allowing customers to just buy the blocks needed to create the dream product they created. 1 customer tells the big producer what to do, and it does it. Quick and simple.
Designed By You — great read over at Fast Company today, discussing the exact same thing: the market telling the producer what to produce, and gets actively involved in the process.
I wonder what this could look like in Education…open source coursebooks? Teachers and students having instant influence and involvement in content design and topics? Or maybe big publishers would just vanish from the picture all together with the advent of self-publishing tools like Lulu.com, blogs, wiki’s, and podcasts etc., for example.
Interesting stuff to think about, and some major problem areas as well, like quality of content or accuracy. The little guy will be passionate and likely current, but there will be greater opportunities for mistakes to creep in….
Could the two ever coexist? Big publishers who are closely connected to the little guy to the point where there is influence over production and products…but stronger quality as far as editing and publishing goes? Lego is big and global…and they’ve done it with their Lego Factory….I wonder what is stopping textbook publishers.
I just watched this, and wonder if it’s somehow related to the discussion. Even if you don’t think it is, it’ll make you laugh: guaranteed.
Seth Godin: This is Broken
Photo Credit:
Biloxi Bridge Close-Up by laffy4k
