Blog Juice for Educational Technology

We’ve all thought about it before. Usually the thought occurs when we’re dog tired, underfed, our wrists splintering in carpal tunnel agony. And then we circle the four hundredth comma splice and cry, “WHY DIDN’T I GO INTO MATH INSTEAD?” Well, help has arrived. Now, for a small and highly reasonable fee, we can outsource our grading to qualified graders, all too happy to labor (I think they want food or something). Chances are, these graders have a better grasp of Standard English than we do anyway, and the comments will probably be more insightful than the red “AWK”s and “WTF??”s randomly distributed throughout a three page treble-spaced document (with 3″ gutter). I can see it now–email all the papers out Friday afternoon, get “crunked,” and have a set of marked-up papers ready for Monday morning. At what price, (in)sanity?

Dear Kairos Readers,

The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce the launch of next\text, a new project designed to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that will enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook.

There are two stages to the next\text project. The first is a curated website showcasing significant projects currently in the field. The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions. These areas include, but are in no way limited to: “expanded” multimedia textbooks; “open-source” textbooks continually improved by teachers and students; dynamic, networked textbooks with live or regularly updating components; collaborative work spaces; and multi-user games.