Model and promote strategies for achieving equitable access to digital tools and resources and technology-related best practices for all students and teachers. (ISTE 2011)
We all know that the higher education costs have increased steadily over the years. Some of the biggest challenges I faced in college were paying for required textbooks and course material such as software. I did not want the inability of a student to pay for a certain textbook or software to have a negative impact on their learning experience.
In all of my computer science courses, I offer a textbook that can be read online through the school library for free. Students are also able to purchase a hard copy of the textbook if needed and/or desired. Picking a library textbook often requires me to make substantial changes to my lesson plan. Also, there are cases where the library does not pick up the next edition of library textbook, requiring me to pick a different textbook that is available to the school library and making the appropriate lesson plan changes.
Similarly, for required software in my computer science courses, I pick tools that are not only free to students, but are available on multiple platforms – MAC, Windows, and Linux. I hit this problem when in one of the first courses I taught at my current school – programming in C#. At the time, the only software available for programming in C# was Visual Studio. However, Visual Studio had just come out with a community version that is free to students (it is now free to all). My school had purchased and installed the Enterprise version of Visual Studio on all school machines, which includes many more features than are found in the Community version. The Enterprise version is very expensive and typically out of the price range for an average student. I decided to switch my class to the Community version of Visual Studio. This required me to change my lesson plan yet again, and to adopt free, open source versions of tools only found in the Enterprise version of Visual Studio. Over time, some of these tools have been integrated into Visual Studio – like Visual Studio Live Share – while others remain separate tools – like Trello – both of which are described in my post on facilitating digital citizenship with computer science students.
Picking textbooks and software that are freely available to my computer science students is one I can make sure that all students have access to required course material. I am also exploring the use of Open Education Resources (OER) for future quarters that will give my students free access to resources beyond just textbooks and software.
References
- International Society for Technology in Education. (ISTE; 2011). Standards for Coaches. https://id.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-C_PDF.pdf.