I really enjoyed reading the article by Jesse Stommel about using textbooks and the implications of them. I have been pretty fortunate in my post secondary education that my textbooks never equalled the cost of my tuition, but my fiance wasn’t quite as lucky. He finished out his degree with these massive textbooks that he spent a small fortune on and will never touch again. It is completely shocking how much that corporations can charge for something so simple, and then the universities require the students to purchase them. In one of my undergraduate courses we had a textbook that was written by our professor, and when he explained the text he shared his frustration about the textbook prices, as we were being charged just over $100.00 per book, and the actual cost to make it was only about $25.00. As a student I really appreciated when professors didn’t have a required book, but instead made the readings available to us online through PDF or websites that did not cost a fee. I feel that when it comes to education, K-12 or higher, every effort should be made to enable students to access readings and materials for study at the lowest cost.
After looking at Bronwyn Hegarty’s article about open pedagogy I am really intrigued at how open pedagogy could be made accessible for elementary teachers to participate. So often teachers are already so busy with everything else going on in their lives, it can be a lot to ask them to start sharing everything they are doing in an open pedagogy online setting.
Personally as a new teacher I love reading teacher blogs and looking at what they are doing and what is successful. It helped me throughout my undergraduate degree with creating lessons and activities because I had no experience and could turn to their blogs to give me the insight. Often I found that using a teacher blog, with their less formal language and very honest insights, much more helpful when understanding a pedagogical concept about teaching than the textbook that we were required to read from. And while I love using that resource I can understand how difficult it may be for those teaches to continue to post and share. I am thankful that those teachers were able to find the time to share their experiences because even though its not helping their immediate students it is helping other teachers learn thus creating a larger learning community.
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Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources. Educational Technology,55(4), 3-13. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/44430383
Stommel, J. (2018, September 12). Textbooks, OER, and the Need for Open Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/textbooks-oer-and-the-need-for-open-pedagogy/