ed talk live tonight-textbook free school

Ed tech live talked about google wave and its comparison with google docs. They were saying that google wave is complex and will take awhile for people to understand. Not something that I am ready to use. They were also questions about video and using it to tape the students. They were saying not to use video and use audio with pictures instead. Video is something you have to master. It takes too long to edit and put together. If you want to use video, just tape it and post it to Utube and mark it as private or public. The subject that interested me the most was the discussion about whether textbooks were obsolete. They said we should pay teachers to write textbooks. Textbooks are more for reference anymore. Teachers only use part of textbooks, jump around chapters and use supplements. There was someone in the chatroom talking about how Vail is working without textbooks. Their website is beyondtextbooks.org. I looked it up and it sounds like a great idea. It seems to be working for them. This is a low income community. They used money to buy laptops instead of textbook adoptions. Everything is done from online. Teachers access resources that are organized by state standards and assembled in a instuctional calendar. They have formative assessments developed by teachers, have resources available including weblinks, powerpoints and more, and utilize professional sharing with their peers in their school or across the state. I will definitly read more about this. Sounds like the wave of the future.