Designers Discussing Design: An Investigation into the Design of an Innovative Science Textbook Designed to Take Advantage of Multi-Touch Tablet Technology and the Cloud

This study utilizes a modified Delphi design to assess instructional and curricular designers’ perceptions of E. O. Wilson’s high school biology textbook available for the iPad or other multi-touch tablets (MTT) and iBooks authoring potential. The first; and perhaps most lasting, impression of the group was this is a visually stunning, scientifically relevant textbook that should be a game changer in how the next generation of science textbooks are developed and the textbook that was measured in pounds and cubic inches of space in your child’s backpack is dead! Also the text has reasonable accommodations and some pedagogical tools. Concerns center on the struggling readers ability to process such a visually distracting presentation and typical concerns with integrating new technologies in any learning environment. What is the future of the traditional textbook? The states of California and Texas along with others (Hill, 2010) and the countries such as Turkey (Haber7, 2011; FATIH, nd) have recently launched initiatives to implement digital textbooks as primary or supplemental source material for K-12 instruction. Advances in publishing (Stern, Aprea, & Ebner, 2003; Trumbo, 1999), have resulted in textbooks that look more like the Internet (Leu, 2000), software (Anderson & Slough, 20112), or applications for smart phones and/or other hand-help digital devices such as multitouch tablets (MTT). As textbooks are transitioning to include more graphical information, MTT, and cloud computing open a new development window for the development of textbooks that champion the inclusion of more interactive graphical elements (e.g., hyperlinks, 3-D models, image maps, animations, videos, etc.) to fundamentally change the text accessibility (McTigue & Slough, 2010) for all science learners (Rupley & Slough, 2010). MTT are of particular interest because they have been reported to provide enriched interactions; new instructional approaches and models; interactive assessment and feedback (Roschell et al., 2007); increased engagement and improved classroom management through the maintenance of eye contact during instruction; recording of voice and video; easy sharing of data; use of multiple applications (Mock, 2004); cost savings verses traditional textbooks; ease of sharing/implementing supplemental material (Hulls, 2005); 3-D application for improved spatial learning; dynamic content; and speech to text and text to speech features for students with hearing impairments (Mitchell, 2007). In short, MTTs provide most of the advantages of a traditional computer with less of the limitations. One evolving innovative science textbook that takes advantage of the MTT and cloud computing is E. O. Wilson’s Life on Earth: An Introduction (2012). An introduction to the resource and the first several chapters are available for downloading on an iPad with iBooks and on a traditional computer with iTunes (this paper uses a version downloaded on March 2, 2012). The book is a product of the E. O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and is being developed over the next two years to take advantage of the purported advantages of the MTT, cloud computing, digital publishing in general and the iBooks author tool being offered for free by Apple. This paper investigates the individual and collective perceptions of a group of instructional and curricular designers that have individual interests and expertise related to the design of science curriculum, interactive graphical elements, scaffolding, and reading strategies with struggling readers and includes discussion of the text itself and to a lesser extent iBook author and MTTs in general.