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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? Another BUT: The publishers have found ways to get around the $150 limit, including offering, at extra but tempting cost, such features as audio versions of the grammar presentations, and online consultation about grammar . 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? |