Mfarhanonline Social Media News: Sitting at the front of the class and attentively listening to a professor’s lecture won’t be enough for college students aiming to impress their professors once the new BioBook rolls out. With BioBook , an interactive educational tool for tablets, professors can monitor student progress — from how they’re keeping up to the rest of the class to what page they’re at in the text book. Now the makers of the BioBook are waiting with bated breath to find out what Apple is planning to announce this Thursday — and whether the two companies are about to become competitors. BioBook is the creation of two Wake Forest University professors: Jed Macosko , an assistant professor of physics and Dan Johnson, a senior lecturer in biology. They hope the interactive learning tool will spark the interest of non-biology majors early in their college careers. Macosko says this precarious time is when students drop out or lose interest in learning. Perhaps, this program can help. “Biology is not linear, it is a web of many connected facts,” Macosko said. With interactive learning, “you can choose your own adventure.” Macosko, an educator for 15 years, believes no two students learn the same way. “Nobody learns exactly like the textbook authors had in mind,” he said. Students who’ve had trouble with the typical attend-a-lecture, read-a-textbok model might be more interested in a subject if they can learn its concepts with an interactive learning tool. BioBook could also be useful for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, whose minds read text in a different order. For students who prefer reading from paper and being able to highlight texts with a pen, they can print out the course textbook from BioBook. Professors can monitor students’ progress with ! assignme nts, quizzes, and other interactive learning tools. These tools also allow students to self-monitor their progress in relation to their peers. BioBook uses “near-peer authoring” — basically, a giant Wikipedia-like database. Science majors who recently completed the course will write summaries of key learnings, or nodes, in easy-to-understand prose. Students’ explanations are edited and added to the database for a particular class. The professor can then add to the database any other materials the students should know. Over time, the database will grow. It’s like having your smart, but down-to-earth dorm mate explain the recent biology 101 course they just completed. Despite the dubious reputation of a learning tool anyone can edit , studies have shown Wikipedia is just as reliable as an encyclopedia. BioBook is currently being beta tested by non-biology majors in select colleges and universities in the United States. The program will be available to university students this summer and cost $60 (not including the cost of a tablet). BioBook is “platform agnostic” — any tablet owner can access BioBook because it works on the open source course management system of Moodle . The book’s creators also partnered with education technology company, Odigia. Made possible by a $249,000 grant from the Next Generation Learning Challenges , a non-profit partner of the Gate’s Foundation, the funding allows the team to sell BioBook for $60 per student — half the rate of a standard, full-price textbook. However, at this point costs have been low and they might be able to lower the price further in the future, Macosko says. Especially if Apple announces a competitor. BioBook’s creators will have their ears tuned to Apple’s education announcement this Thursday to see if the company will introduce something that could trump BioBook’s interactive learning landscape. “If they (Apple) were to enter into the education world, they could acco! mplish a lot,” Macosko acknowledged. “And we would be happy about that. But they may approach this the way textbook makers do.” If Apple’s textbook functions like an regular ebook , then Macosko will continue with his plan to sell the interactive BioBook to students and professors. If Apple has listened to educators who say students learn in a variety of ways, and release an interactive textbook, then they may lower the price of the BioBook. Either way, the BioBook could revolutionize classroom learning. “The whole point is to reform the way people use textbooks,” Macosko added. Eight higher-education institutions are currently testing out the program with non-biology majors at schools including: Salem College , Winston-Salem State University , Guilford Technical Community College , Wake Forest University and University of Florida . They are currently translating the materials to Spanish, which is expected to be released fall 2012. In the future, the team working on BioBook hope to see the program trickle-down to grade school students. What do you think about BioBook? Tell us in the comments. More About: apple , education , tablets , wikipedia Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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