|
||
|
Goethezitat: "Was die Herren Zeitgeist nennen, ist oft der Herren eigner Geist." Use of technology is not in itself identical with proficiency-oriented pedagogy, but they are very compatible, IF the technology is used wisely. 1) It's media friendly • Color ink-on-paper printing is expensive (10x as expensive as B&W, where color graphics take up only 3x the memory of grayscale). The "Wie, bitte?" disk has several times as many graphics (1000+) as any printed textbook (<300), and the same pictured can be used in several contexts. • You can't hear sounds or see movies by mousing on a word printed in ink on paper. 2) It's pedagogically more flexible • The resources are in a "net"- or "web"-like environment; presentation does not have to follow the LINEAR structure of a book (grammar section, vocabulary list, then dialogs? or dialogs with marginal vocabularyglosses, then the grammar section?) • Resources can be hidden or revealed selectively (full dialog text, partial dialog text - some books tried to do this with colored ink and tinted plastic sheets - very expensive!) • It's very friendly to speaking and listening. 3) It's producer-, distributor-, and user-friendly • The author-producer does not need an expensive ink-on-paper printing operation. • DTP was already a major step in release from publisher constraints, and multimedia goes a step further. So does internet-delived distribution. • The textbook that costs the student $150 (and earns the publisher maybe $3 net profit and the author $10 in royalties) can be delivered via technology at a retail price of only $20 (an "ATM Twenty" in publisher lingo), and still yield that same $3 net profit and $10 royalty (or even $13 to the person who is both author and publisher). BUT: What role, then, does the publisher have? The "name" on the package? Some sort of editing function? Better marketing and distribution? These issues arise in all sectors of the economy, and particularly in the ink-on-paper area: newspapers, magazines, books - and also textbooks, where publishers have a more pronounced "monopoly" status than publishers of other kinds of books. The examples of "Rosetta Stone" and "Auf geht's" give much food for thought. I intend to give some as well. But who knows which way the future - the Zeitgeist" - will go? |