Student Guide Corner

When marketing guru Seth Godin enters the fray, people listen. His Textbook Rant blog post today focuses on the expense, impracticality, and lack of engagement textbooks provide and stresses how quickly they become outdated. He declares, "As far as I can tell, assigning a textbook to your college class is academic malpractice." And he concludes, This industry deserves to die. It has extracted too much time and too much money and wasted too much potential. We can do better. A lot better. What didn't he say? He never mentioned that textbooks are inaccessible to many students - those with physical, vision or other print disabilities. But he offers a digital solution that offers accessibility at no cost to the student. The solution seems simple to me. Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it's part of their job, remember?) When you have a clas...

We have an unprecedented opportunity to wisely invest in "high-quality" assistive technology and the professional development necessary to ensure effective integration and implementation due to the ARRA funding for special education . The Ed.gov site includes this information in the fact sheet American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: IDEA Recovery Funds for Services to Children and Youths with Disabilities : Some possible uses of these limited-term IDEA ARRA funds that are allowable under IDEA and aligned with the core reform goals for which states must provide assurances under SFSF include: Obtain state-of-the art assistive technology devices and provide training in their use to enhance access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities. The Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd) has created a comprehensive resource to guide technology investment decisions using ARRA funds. They offer: Tech Matrix: Technology Supports for Learning - Ali...