Excellent perspective on the future of “books”

April 22nd, 2009
by Cleve Miller


This made me think about the “Future of Coursebooks” thread on the IATEFL Cardiff forums. Steven Johnson outlines where he sees e-book technology taking us, and how it will change some of our most basic ideas about reading and reading behaviors. I think his analysis shows clearly the limits of the “one content - many media” re-purposing, where an ELT publisher takes print content, or CD-ROM content, and puts it on the web: while it’s often OK, the content wasn’t developed to take advantage of the social and collaborative nature of the web. Thus, opportunity lost; it’s like turning off the picture on the TV and using it as a radio.

Anyway, Johnson outlines where ebook technology will take us. In bullets:

1) Reading will change from solitary to social:

As you read, you will know that at any given moment, a conversation is available about the paragraph or even sentence you are reading. Nobody will read alone anymore. Reading books will go from being a fundamentally private activity — a direct exchange between author and reader — to a community event, with every isolated paragraph the launching pad for a conversation with strangers around the world.

2) Book-length content will become granular:

Readers will have the option to purchase a chapter for 99 cents, the same way they now buy an individual song on iTunes. The marketplace will start to reward modular books that can be intelligibly split into standalone chapters. This fragmentation sounds unnerving — yet another blow to the deep-focus linearity of the print-book tradition.

3) Google PageRank will fuel sales:

Writers and publishers will begin to think about how individual pages or chapters might rank in Google’s results, crafting sections explicitly in the hopes that they will draw in that steady stream of search visitors.

Individual paragraphs will be accompanied by descriptive tags to orient potential searchers; chapter titles will be tested to determine how well they rank. Just as Web sites try to adjust their content to move as high as possible on the Google search results, so will authors and publishers try to adjust their books to move up the list.

Fascinating stuff. The “social” and “granular” themes are what English360 is all about, and I think that this will bring us a step closer to the goal of radically personalized learning learning content.

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Community as curriculum: the “rhizomatic model” of learning

April 14th, 2009
by Cleve Miller


“In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions.”

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New blog find

April 14th, 2009
by Cleve Miller


Peter Thwaites in Oman has some interesting conversation happening at his (new?) blog:  A Look at Language Teaching.

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Capitalism 2.0

April 9th, 2009
by Cleve Miller


Interesting article by Nassim Taleb that would be great input for a class for financial English. And here’s a blog post discussing it.

Hat tip to Andrew. If you go to the Taleb article from his post you won’t need to register at the FT.

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Making coursebooks more relevant

April 7th, 2009
by Cleve Miller


Very useful post (as always) from Karenne Sylvester over at Kalinago English.

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Already told my wife this is what I want for Christmas

April 6th, 2009
by Cleve


Simultaneously the coolest yet most horrifying thing I’ve seen lately.

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Interview with Martin Dougiamas, creator of Moodle

April 5th, 2009
by Cleve


From The Island Weekly, Anne Hodgson’s blog.  See her post for a link to the full interview audio.

I always try to explain the difference between Moodle and what we are doing with the open platform English360, but Dougiamos himself outlines it better than I can:

Moodle is really a system of control. The web 2.0 is very much about complete freedom and openness and lack of privacy. And Moodle is obviously oriented to what institutions care about, which is about walls and protected spaces, and this just allows you to bring content from the wider world into these potected spaces and do interesting things with them.”

It’s for people who like islands. It’s for those people who need that. And it’s definitely not the solution for everybody.

Our goal with English360 is to provide web 2.0 learning tools for those who don’t need the islands and don’t need a system of control.

This reminds me that I need to dig up and post on Dougiamas’ “5 laws of VLEs” - which are brilliant (although I’ll propose a 6th Law).

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Sunday reading

March 29th, 2009
by Cleve


Best article yet on the financial crisis. The first three paragraphs sum things up nicely.

Mind is not brain. Kinda following a zen “the self is an illusion” direction.

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The future of materials development

March 23rd, 2009
by Cleve


Very interesting thread on the IATEFL Cardiff Online materials development forum about the future of coursebooks - I couldn’t help but dive in of course. A lot of valid complaints about watered-down generic content from traditional publishers who are “dragging themselves kicking and screaming into the 1990’s” as Gavin put it, perfectly. But recognition that coursebooks can add value with cohesive organized syllabi and that they give learners a sense of order and clear aims, and that teacher-generated content can be uneven and unorganized.

I think one way to look at the situation is to use what can be called a “content continuum” with publishers on one side and teachers on the other, that shows the strengths and weaknesses of both. Here’s the idea:


You can see how the strengths and weaknesses offset. Publishers are relatively slow and expensive whereas teachers are fast and cheap. Publishers need to create generic, controversy-free content fit for a wide audience, whereas teachers can fit content to the exact needs of each learner or class.

I think we need to look at this, not as publishers or teachers, but as a continuum that we can move along in either direction as the students and learning environment demands. You can already see this happening in other publishing areas. Encyclopedia Britannica (far left of continuum) announced it would be opening up to accept content from users, albeit slowly and carefully. Thus it moves a bit to the right on the contiuum. Wikipedia (far right of continuum) announced it would be providing a bit more editorial oversight to quell the most egregious tom-foolery on the site. Thus it moves a bit to the left.

So in this transition period I think we’ll see more of this. And in ELT we’re just getting started on tools* to develop the user-generated side of the continuum. It’ll be fascinating to see how the space develops. But what is certain is that the old relationship between publishers and teachers will be turned upside down, as bottom-up materials development replaces top-down coursebooks. Smart publishers** will seek a partnership relationship with users; publishers who don’t will dwindle in relevance.

And what’s the whole point? In today’s world things move too fast for traditional publishing planning. Using a coursebook first published 5 years ago limits relevance to the learner in a way that wasn’t true last generation. But more importantly, new digital approaches to materials development that move smoothly along the content continuum, adopting and adapting the best of both extremes, promise to deliver the radical personalization that will give learning back to the learner.

* watch this space
** also, watch this space

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Are coursebooks still relevant?

March 22nd, 2009
by Cleve


Via Howard Vickers off a tweet, a great article by Jane Petring.

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