New Agriculture Curriculum Incorporates eBooks and Talking Text

As teachers are forced to compete with televisions, cell phones, Nintendos, and other electronic gizmos for a student's attention, Oklahoma agricultural educators may have a leg up, thanks to some innovative applications of technology to curriculum products.

Agricultural Education I, a newly

revised edition of the best-selling curriculum produced by the Curriculum and Instructional Materials Center at the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, incorporates several new key features that can help make teaching-and learning-easier. For starters, the new book is deliberately more engaging. In contrast to the outline format of previous editions, the 2005 edition of Agricultural Education I more closely resembles a textbook. Each unit in the curriculum includes a feature story about a person in an unusual profession that ties in with the subject at hand. Hundreds of photos and neatly rendered illustrations have been added. In addition, dozens of short stories about interesting facts have been included to pique student interest.

The instructor's manual includes a CD with supplemental teaching resources, such as Cooperative Extension fact sheets, video clips, livestock breed photos, and tree and plant identification guides. Multiple-choice written tests have been provided on the CD in Microsoft Word format so that teachers can easily customize them for their own classroom use. A set of PowerPoint lecture slides, which closely follow the book's content, is available as a separate companion product.

Going Paperless

In addition to its popular paper form, Agricultural Education I is available in eBook format and can be viewed using eReader-a software program that is easy to use and available at no cost. The eReader software allows books to be displayed on a laptop or desktop computer running on a PC, Macintosh, or Linux operating system. More importantly, eReader can be used on most PDAs (personal digital assistants, or handheld computers) and Symbian Smartphones.

Some may find that reading from a small electronic screen takes some getting used to but, with a little practice, it quickly becomes second nature. When viewing the eBook version of Agricultural Education I, students can adjust the size of the font, perform word searches, add electronic bookmarks and personal notes, view photos and illustrations, and "navigate" through the document by clicking on built-in hypertext links. To turn pages, students simply tap on the screen. Traditional pencil/paper workbook activities have been created in Excel, which allows for lockable and editable fields so that students don't accidentally write their answers over the questions. The backlight feature built into most PDAs also allows students to read in situations where they normally couldn't read a printed textbook.

Though not yet formally released to the public, the Agricultural Education I eBook curriculum is already having an impact while being piloted in a handful of classrooms across Oklahoma. The response of Broken Arrow High School agriculture students to the eBook curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, many students have said they wish more curriculum products were available in eBook format. The interactivity of the eBook seems to be the most rewarding and educational enhancing aspect of the new design. Students like being able to write notes in their eBooks. They also like tapping on links and being taken to pictures and sidebar stories, rather than being forced to look through them while scrolling.

The Key to Success

Successful early childhood education includes activities that are challenging as well as entertaining. These factors are the reasons for the popularity of such educational television programs as Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. Much of the learning in elementary school is also fun and engaging. However, the nature of structured learning often loses some of its luster at the high school level. As a result, some students become easily distracted. Most students today own cell phones, pagers, MP3 players, and gaming systems. Since multi-use handheld computers support these and other functions, the PDA curriculum seamlessly blends education with the students' world of technology. This allows teachers to take advantage of the fact that students are more likely to be drawn to meaningful learning activities that are new and entertaining.

In addition to providing access to electronic curriculum, PDAs allow agricultural education students a one-onone opportunity to use a computer. In a traditional computer lab, students must share a computer with students in another class within the confines of one classroom. From a logistical standpoint, this makes it difficult to provide meaningful learning. The use of PDAs in the agricultural classroom allows students to use the technology at the site of instruction, wherever and whenever it is needed-and at a much lower cost than a desktop computer. While students commonly use these devices as an organizer or electronic notepad, they can also be used to track the progress of show livestock, photograph species of range plants in their natural settings, calculate the correct amount of fertilizer to use, take and record environmental readings, and access the Internet. Though students can become quite proficient at taking notes by writing on the small PDA screen or tapping on letters using a stylus, students can also attach a collapsible keyboard, which enables them to more efficiently write research papers and complete other written assignments.

The eBook format offers an added bonus, considering the comprehensive nature of Agricultural Education I. With the student workbook numbering more than 800 pages and the instructor's manual approaching 2000 pages, the eBook format encourages students to think of the curriculum as a more portable learning resource than might have previously been the case. Perhaps the greatest unforeseen benefit was that a Broken Arrow High School student with serious back trouble was afforded the ability to carry several books in a device the size of a deck of cards instead of lugging a huge backpack weighing up to 35 pounds!

Project Challenges

New technologies often bring with them new challenges. Recent models of handheld devices have builtin features that make it difficult for teachers to detect instant messaging (electronic note passing), web surfing, or even cheating. Although sophisticated anti-cheating devices are available that disable the infrared beaming function on PDAs, Oklahoma's pilot study uses a more low-tech-and less expensive-approach to test taking. Written tests are distributed as eBooks, and the students use a pencil to fill in paper answer sheets. The tests are in multiple-choice format, and questions can be reorganized to discourage students from electronically sharing (or "beaming") their answers with others.

Another challenge has been the inability for students to complete assignment sheets using eReader. Since an eBook is an uneditable file, students must exit eReader and load a different program such as Forms To Go to complete assignment sheets on their PDAs. This step became necessary due to copyright issues, the costs involved with curriculum development, and the limitations of the software used to create eBooks. However, future versions of the software programs may allow for more flexibility.

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Students using their PDA's to do a class assignment.

Clearly, a disadvantage of using PDAs in the classroom is that they can be easily lost, stolen, or broken. Oklahoma students who use the PDAs say they appreciate the confidence shown by their instructors in their ability to use, care for, and maintain the equipment. So far, the PDAs have fared well with only minor mishaps occurring, many of which could be attributed to normal use and wear. Of course, printed materials can also be lost or damaged. If an eBook file is lost, however, it can simply be reinstalled.

Look Who's Talking

The additional text in Agricultural Education I means more reading for students, presenting an additional challenge to those with reading disabilities. To address this, CIMC is experimenting with a "Read Out Loud" version of Agricultural Education I. This version consists of a secured PDF file that takes advantage of the built-in text-to-speech feature in Adobe Acrobat 6 and later releases. Ideally, students could listen to the audio file on a desktop computer while following along with the reading in their textbooks or PDAs. Many schools routinely hire teachers' aides who, in addition to their other responsibilities, are assigned to read out loud to students who face reading challenges. Adobe Acrobat's textto-speech feature can essentially liberate classroom assistants from their reading duties, allowing them to focus on assisting teachers and students in other ways.

So far, interest in the Read Out Loud version of Agricultural Education I has been quite favorable, with 89 percent of agricultural education teachers recently surveyed saying that they believe such a product would be helpful for students whose reading ability is below average (Oklahoma Survey). Ninety-two percent of teachers said that Read Out Loud tests would be helpful for students who have difficulty completing traditional written tests. In addition, 74 percent of the teachers reported that students who don't have reading problems could probably still benefit from using the text-to-speech feature.1

"Real Learning" for the "Real World"

While the "coolness factor" is great for capturing student interest, incorporating technology into curriculum is becoming increasingly important for preparing students for the workplace. Business and industry is inundated with technology, and the use of a PDA is becoming mainstream, rather than an option just for "techies." Currently, doctors use PDAs for viewing their reference materials, cow-calf producers for maintaining records, landscape designers for making on-the-go project adjustments, personal business owners for tracking invoices, and agriculture teachers for keeping one step ahead of their students! More and more, employers expect new employees to know how to use technology from their very first day on the job, making early exposure to those technologies a necessity. Students who have developed skills using technology have a definite advantage over others when entering the workforce.

Broken Arrow High School agriculture students have also shown improvement in such areas as time management, promptness, quality of work, and organization-an added benefit of using the organizer and calendar functions built into the PDAs. All of these are soft skills highly sought after by business and industry and are directly tied to the basic philosophies of successful students and citizens. These skills can be difficult to teach, but they are greatly enhanced by the use of the technology.

Teachers participating in the eBook pilot studies in Oklahoma agree that incorporating technology into the curriculum is the next logical step in education and workplace preparedness. The eBook curriculum project has proven to be both an exciting new venue for agriculture students and an ideal professional development activity that has helped teachers become more effective and efficient.

SIDEBAR

A software program that is easy to use and available at no cost!

REFERENCE

References

Oklahoma Survey. Unpublished survey conducted in April 2005 of 61 agricultural education teachers from Oklahoma's central district.

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Margi Stone Cooper is an Instructional Development Specialist, CIMC, Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education

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Randy Evans is an Agricultural Education Instructor at Broken Arrow High School, Broken Arrow, OK