Replacing Textbooks via Google Apps

You may have read in my previous posts that we've adopted GAFE at our school and how it's affecting my language curriculum for 6th-8th graders. As we study units to address mechanical/grammar issues while blogging, I create a presentation and then continuously add to the presentation (assignments) as we move along. The students add their work as well. Once we do a group-edit of each individual's work on the presentation, the student can make changes to the same work on their website and I assess it from there. This got me to thinking...


I really should be videotaping my introductions of the individual lessons, the group-edit discussion, and then embedding them into the Google Doc so students can reflect on the lesson and what was learned. Once the unit's complete, I will have a recording of the topic, our work on the topic, and the reflection we made. All in all, a great way to teach a lesson by example, and a perfect way to catch a student up when they're absent. It will also give me feedback on my own teaching skill and issues I may need to fix before opening the topic next year.


But the real need falls under the preparation for our goal of not purchasing textbooks in the future. We've discussed having only laptops and tablets for high school students next year. I imagine there will be trickle down with middle school students. What will replace textbooks if we don't prepare now? The Google Docs will document all of the lesson if I will take the time to embed videos of our progress. Now, to find the tripod...