Interesting Article / Podcast

I just bumped into an interesting article about schools abandoning textbooks in order to go with iPads only.

While the article is short, the accompanying podcast is 15 minutes long and worth a listen.

A couple  parts of the podcast which I found interesting: At 3:38 interviewer asks, "How do you trust the source of that?" referring to students going online to find information that they would have previously found in textbooks.

Sounds like she's assuming that textbooks are superior in that they have been vetted, edited, and thus their content is of higher quality. While it's true that textbooks have been edited, they are not free of bias. They tell one point of view--usually the popular one. Being a product of committees, they are mostly free of anything controversial, provocative and interesting. They do not make good reading.
But more importantly, learning how to "trust the source of that" is a critical skill students (and adults) need to acquire in the age of self-publication. Staying within the confines of textbooks will not help students acquire these new media literacies.

At 8:10, talking to a teacher about Khan Academy, the interviewer asks with much concern, "If you sent your kids to that site doesn't it take teaching out of your hands?"
Why is this a concern? Shouldn't it be one of our goals as educators to help people learn how teach themselves whatever they want? In an age of abundant information, courses, experts, data...being able to learn without the need for a teacher may be one of the most important skills we can acquire.
 
As is often the case, the comments of the article can be quite informative.