One of the greatest shifts we’re seeing with the proliferation of ebooks and digital content deals with the currency and accuracy of information. A major critique of Wikipedia, for example, is that it contains inaccurate information because it is updated by regular folks like you or I. My answer? Change the information. Besides, you do realize that the published-and-bound-sitting-on-your-dusty-bookshelf Britannica has inaccurate information, right? Not to mention textbooks, which are replete with errors and have an apparent inability to contain information developed or discovered within the last decade.
The ability to update information on the fly is creating a fundamental shift in the way we create, consume, and think about information. What if we had the ability to extend this to education? What if, as events happened, there was a way to learn about them in real time? What if, as new scientific discoveries were made, they could be researched and discussed in the classroom concurrently with the real-time developments of physicists and engineers? Right now, there is a major crisis in Japan as scientists everywhere attempt to figure out what to do. What if public education joined forces and worked on similar scenarios, developing their own plans of action? What if university research teams were collaborators with the nuclear engineers and physicists on the ground?
We must get away from the idea of a static, fixed education. The problem is that, in our minds, once something is published, it’s done. Sure, there can be new editions of textbooks, or “revised and expanded” versions of an encyclopedia, but how long will that take? How relevant is that? Why is it that textbook companies charge hundreds of dollars for material that needs to be updated (again) by the time it reaches my hands? Education must be alive. Education must be a dynamic, thriving process that challenges the status quo and opens our eyes to the world around us in addition to those who have gone before. If we spend our time always looking backwards, we’ll miss what’s going on today.
So, I am issuing a call that we begin to think of publishing as forever a beta process. Internet content had this figured out years ago. Education, again, is slow on the uptake. Think of the benefits to acknowledging that the educational process (i.e.- learning) is in beta. There are bugs to work out. There are new problems to be solved. There are questions being asked. There are projects to collaborate on to push forward, thus creating even more solutions (and thus more problems to be solved). When you’re in beta, you’re in a process of discovery. You’re in limbo. You have vision and direction, but you need collaborators, designers, engineers, and testers to provide feedback. Can we be honest enough to admit that we don’t have all the answers, but we have some pretty good ideas?
In an era where we are constantly talking about how students can create their own learning, doesn’t it make sense that we go ahead and just put
everything in beta?
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Greg Garner 