[Edu-sig] Excited about Crunchy Frog

kirby urner kirby.urner at gmail.com
Wed Aug 2 02:31:32 CEST 2006


I'm excited about Crunchy Frog (or whatever Andre chooses to call it),
because it signals a growing trend to switch away from dead tree text
books, and move to dynamic content, i.e. the web.

Kay's big objection, that children have unequal rights as publishers,
is still a concern.

But more and more, young adults are coming to feel their own power, to
make their documents world-readable (some squander this freedom, but
that's their privilege).

In contrast, the way the public schools were historically imprisoned
is becoming more and more evident:  a few big states, like California,
would use their standards-making powers to serve the interests of big
publishing, and steamroll the rest of us into docile compliance.

I used to work for McGraw-Hill, which does many good works, but it was
just too easy to fall into this "winner take all" mentality.  Having
California (or Texas) choose your textbook was like winning the
lottery.  All the smaller states would have to go along, as custom
editions would be too unaffordable.

A lot of us geeks don't think twice about firing up a projector,
downloading Google Earth, or jumping through websites.  But your
average dark ages poor slob has to slave through chapter after chapter
of antediluvean poopka, all in the name of serving some miserable
state standards committee.

Since when did politicians know better?  This business of promulgating
standards should be left to the *schools*.  As it is, a few quisling
academics see fit to collude with the big publishers, because it feeds
their egos to dictate a "one size fits all" solution.

But as soon as we're done winning the Math Wars (I'd say we've won
already, but I'm probably in the minority), we'll be able to bring
teachers new freedom:  to roll their own, to make a name for
themselves, to serve as creative people again, not just as brain-dead
apparatchiks in some "hive mind" nomenclatura.

Kirby


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