We made the decision some 5-6 years ago to abandon the traditional textbook model. We felt most textbooks were too quickly dated and this was certainly the case for those of us who write about the educational uses of technology. It was more than this. We proposed that authors combine a core textbook (we called it a Primer) with online resources. This now happens on a primitive basis with many textbooks, but the commitment to this hybrid approach is what the textbook companies do not fully understand. Yes, some content is best presented online and flexibility and multimedia are available when a company commits to combining a book and online content. What textbook companies do not want to do is support authors who write continuously. Because of the editing and production process, books are dated by the time they are actually printed. In order to combat this reality, we argued that proven authors should be paid to write continuously. Meeting a delivery date and then waiting to be given the approval to develop new content until a new edition is approved three years later is not good enough. Even after multiple successful editions, it was this factor that led us to break away from Cengage some years ago.
The other side of this is that as an author you have to be willing to back up your commitment. I understand this issue as a faculty member and as an author. I use our Kindle book and other resources in the graduate course I teach. While the course that will begin in a week or so draws students from various backgrounds, the course is focused on the use of technology in K-12. The university supplies me with great tools for teaching online (e.g., Blackboard, Adobe Connect with a phone bridge), but I try to make reasonable use of online tools that some might regard as less sophisticated. How educators learn with technology influences how they will teach with technology. Most K-12 districts will not be in a position to make Adobe Connect or a phone bridge available to their students.
One of the tools I have used in past courses has been Google Hangouts on Air. In smaller summer courses, I could use this tool for the synchronous portion of the course. I could send the recording of the classes to YouTube for those students who could not participate in the live class because of geography or an occasional conflict. Hangouts on Air was available to anyone and the educators in my class could use the same tool to link their classroom with others. [Maybe I should explain a phone bridge. As the phrase implies, a phone bridge uses phone audio rather than VOIP. You just cannot count on all students having sufficient bandwidth for quality audio and the audio stream ends up being most easily degraded in a way that influences the quality of interaction. A phone bridge creates what is essentially a giant conference call synched to the other resources and perhaps the audio fed from a traditional classroom.]
So, I am a week away from starting the Fall semester. The syllabus is ready to go and students have had the opportunity to take a look at what will be expected. I learn that in September Google will eliminate Google Hangouts on Air as it presently exists and wants users to move to Youtube Live Stream. The timing and the brief lead time here are problematic. I must say that Google has eliminated several tools that I thought were great. Google Reader comes to mind. I need to heed my own advice and not complain about free.
This has happened so quickly that I have not really had the time to fully research the new option. I thought Hangouts on Air was great because it was simple to use, easily saved content to YouTube, and made use of Google Circles which I thought was a great way to provide a reasonable level of access and security. The content available explaining the new opportunity seems very sketchy at present. There are more settings to consider and it seems this is more focused on a concept emphasizing broadcast rather than group interaction. I will wait a bit before developing new tutorials, but it seems it is down to delete the present content on Hangouts.
