The new 4 letter Word - BOOK !!

Everywhere I go on social media at the moment, that is talking about education, it is "textbooks are bad!"... "textbooks should be thrown away"... etc etc......

Let me ask a question ....
If you need a science fact about how water molecules are put together, is the fact any different if it is read online or in a book?

I have never been a fan of the type of exam that expects students to memorise facts and spew them back in response to the appropriate question. This tests memory, not understanding of the topic, and it always has. I have always argued that if you are working in a job, then you have a whole library of resources at your fingertips to refer to and you don't have to waste time trying to remember all this stuff. We want people with application and understanding to be doing the jobs. This was my opinion before the internet ( yes, I was a teacher B. I. )

So, if a fact can be found by thumbing through a book, great! If it can be found by a quick internet search, then that is great too! We have to teach students to use all the resources around them when doing their research , including newspapers, libraries, the internet,  talking to people, market research, and yes, old textbooks.

After that, online apps and activities are fantastic at embedding understanding of the facts as it forces students to use what they have learned in practical ways. This, as we all know, is one of the top keystones to learning - using and applying.
There is a huge wealth of this stuff out there on the web for us to use with our students.

But lets not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Lets teach our kids they have lots a ways to find and use information.
Then they can create their own and share it with the world.

Flipping Great!!!...

I found a great iPad app recently called, Book Creator. I was very interested in having a go at this as I have quite a large collection of really good design books in my class room, but most of them have way too much in them and tend to put the students off a little. I thought that something like this app would give me the opportunity to cherry pick  what I wanted to put across to the students and illustrate it myself. The options on this app are to upload to iBooks or output as a PDF. I was going to go the PDF direction and link these over to my DVC site.
This plan changed yesterday when Dorothy introduced me to an online little gem called FlipSnack.
On this, you can upload a PDF and it converts it into a really cool little book that you can turn the pages of. The embed code gives you the chance to embed this where you want!

Here is a short sample of my book. I have only got the first section of it completed yet so it needs a lot more work, but I was too excited by this not to have a go.
I can see all sorts of things coming from this small start!!!

I have just tried it on my site and embedding the code works really well... have a look here.
I have just noticed something too.... there is a little of the writing missing from the front cover as I had to change the font from Apple Gothic, as this came out blank when I uploaded it. I went through the book and changed all the fonts to Helvetica ( fairly standard ), but I missed one little section on the front. Learning, learning...