The Open Textbook Toolkit by Waller, Cross, & Rigling

Gutierrez, Vincente         

      

Waller, M., Cross, W. M., & Rigling, L. (2017). The Open Textbook Toolkit. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 49(1), 53-65. doi: 10.3138/jsp.49.1.53

Waller, Cross and Rigling’s (2017) article centers the relationship between university press and academic library in the scholarly communication ecosystem and how open educational resources (OER) can strengthen these partnerships. The authors go over possible barriers to and benefits of collaboration, citing that open textbooks could be a promising bridge between them. These barriers include: differences between how library and press are evaluated and perceived, differing business models and funding sources, and an underappreciation for the other’s strengths and potential. Collaboration between them can lead to innovation and can potentially reduce costs. These partnerships can remold the scholarly communication system with open textbooks as a “promising area” for collaboration (p. 56). Waller, Cross and Rigling (2017) state that “with their shared academic values, libraries and presses have an opportunity to intervene and reclaim textbooks from the for-profit publishers that have captured the textbook market” (p. 57). This situation ultimately led to North Carolina State University (NCSU) and University of North Carolina (UNC) Press’s Open Textbook Toolkit. This project began with NCSU’s 2013 Alt-Textbook project which provided instructors who replaced commercial textbooks with an OER a grant of between $500 and $2000. Despite its success, one barrier that remained is that there was limited availability of OER resources. To aid in the creation and adoption, they developed the Open Textbook Toolkit to break “down the creation of an open textbook or similar type of OER into simple, flexible, and scalable components” (p. 60). The Toolkit will be tested on the psychology field and was just awarded a research grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The research will take place in three phases: “1) a planning and preparation phase; 2) a survey and focus group phase; and 3) an evaluation, reporting, and dissemination phase” (p. 61). The goal is to create a strong library-press partnership via the Toolkit.

            The article centers on the commonalities and differences between academic libraries and university presses and hopes that OER resources will not only address the many financial burdens of depending on a commercial presses but also strengthen collaboration between the libraries and presses. They hope the Open Textbook Toolkit will unify them in a “clear, mission-driven project” (p. 63). The most valid and useful point the article makes is that a unifying project can help strengthen the partnership of academic library and university press. It seems to me that this would alleviate some of the financial burden placed upon the collection and free up some resources for better collection development. The benefits of and barriers to collaboration between library and press are also noteworthy. A downside, though, is that this article seems incomplete without the hard data about how the research of the project is turning out. Another aspect that could improve this article could be about how faculty views OER resources, i.e. what are the benefits and downsides to the shift. I also wanted to know what the specifics behind the Open Textbook Toolkit were and how exactly it supports library, faculty, and university press. Overall, this article could be well-utilized in giving students a perspective of how a project can unite or strengthen the relationship between university library and press, but its lack of specifics about the Toolkit and some faculty impressions about OER would be of more interest and enlightening to the student. It would be a great companion piece to their future research on the Open Textbook Toolkit, when available. Though this article is not technically about collection development, it does give some insight into what some universities are doing to develop and encourage OER collections and utilization of that collection.

Nordblad, Elizabeth   

Dintersmith, Ted., (2018). What schools could be. Princeton University Press.

            What Schools Could Be presents the reader with a taste of our current K-12 school system. Ted Dintersmith takes the reader on his 2016 journey across all fifty states visiting schools and engaging with students, educators and politicians. Dintersmith’s opinion is that our system is outdated, ineffective and blatantly underserving poor students, families and communities. Additionally, the students who do well in the current system tend to do so because they have an abundance of resources, specifically parents and funds that support them.

            I walked away from this book confirming what I already suspected, that students learn best when they are engaged. Engagement means that students have a sense of purpose and autonomy over their learning. Unfortunately, our system is not set up to promote engagement but to promote high GPAs and SAT scores to get students into college. Simply put, the way students learn and the way they are taught don’t match up in our current school system.

            To make matters worse, we are not providing students the opportunity to develop essential skills that they really need like innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving. The world of today and tomorrow require these skills.

            This book inspired me to think that we, in education, cannot wait for the education system to drastically change instead we need to implement better practices and better opportunities on our own. We need to continuously assess what is working and what is not. The measurement of success should come directly from how well are students are doing not by how well they score on standardized tests. We need to encourage more hands-on learning and less drill and kill. We all want kids to find their passion and run with it.  

           

Some of the facts Dintersmith shared were not surprising but still deplorable and noteworthy to consider.

“…47% of adults in the United States can’t pay an unanticipated bill of $400 unless they sell off personal possessions or beg money from friends or family.” page. 13.

“…3% of the enrollment at our nation’s most competitive colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile. At most elite colleges, as many students come from the society’s top 1% as from the bottom’s 60%.” page. 122

“…19% of our kids who drop out of high school, …two thirds of prison inmates are high school dropouts.” page. 150

Hatcher, Rachel

Winter, J. (2019). Equity through diversity: Their importance of LGBTQ titles in our elementary school libraries. California School Library Association Journal, 43(1), p. 5-8. Retrieved from: http://csla.net/publications/journal/

Winter stresses the importance of a diverse collection, including adding LGBTQ titles to the collection. She makes an insightful recommendation: libraries should have plenty of LGBTQ titles as ebooks for checkout. In a school library setting, students may not want to advertise what they are reading to other students. Having both fiction and nonfiction titles available as ebooks allows for a level of privacy students may appreciate.

Winter also suggest using Teachingbooks.net. I like to use their “Find Resources For” buttons to learn more about LGBTQIA+ books. This site offers the ability to narrow your results based on grade level, curricular area, genre, cultural area, award-winning books, and more.

Virtual Reality in Los Angeles

Enszer, Greta

Piper, N. (2017). Los Angeles’s New Circus Act. Bloomberg Businessweek, (4517), 44–46. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=122159348&site=ehost-live&scope=site

For my colleague's birthday, he invited us to the new Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles.  Seeing as it was a school night, I did not think I could revisit my twenties, galavanting the city when I had to wake up early the next day and teach.  But after visiting their website, I thought, this could be one of those LA events that you don't want to miss and is the reason you endure the high cost of living here. 

Having never experienced virtual reality, I never realized the VR craze.  Well, after putting on the VR backpack and headset, I was transported to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  So real.  I felt like I was walking over a rickety wooden bridge with skeletons jumping out at me.  For only $7, this is one of the best experiences in Los Angeles.  I'm not saying it beats swimming in the ocean, but I am considering a field trip here for my high school library advisory committee.

Of course, I wanted to know more about how this business came to be.  While we were there, companies had sponsored bonding nights for their employees.  They were given game cards loaded with money!  This is not what happens in public school events. 

Brent Bushnell, the co-founder of Two Bit Circus, is the son of Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese.  Intel Corp. invested in Two Bit Circus after Bushnell and Gradman

provided games, robots, lasers, and the entertainment at a few of its events. 

Two Bit Circus has raised $21.5 million in venture capital since it incorporated in 2012. (Nolan Bushnell isn’t an investor, but he has a seat on the eight-person board.) For their first location, the founders have signed a lease on a 50,000-square-foot warehouse space in Downtown L.A.

The high tech adult arcade includes a 30-minute “story room,” a variant of the popular type of adventure game in which players have to solve a series of puzzles to exit a locked room.  There is also be a 1,000-square-foot virtual reality arena where guests compete against one another in video games. Unlike in regular arcade games, which have a limited set of outcomes, the plot lines in the VR games vary, so visitors have a reason to come back.