Blurts

The news this week has focused on racism in sport. Among the solutions proposed (at least on the news programs) has been greater diversification in front office personnel. Having this context, I happen to encounter a couple of articles claiming that the teaching profession is not as diverse as it might be.

Just because it seemed strange, the article contained a comment about North Dakota:

“Even in a place like North Dakota, where the students aren’t particularly diverse relative to the rest of the country, it’s important for our social fabric, for our sense as a nation, that students are engaging with people who think, talk and act differently than them but can also be just as effective at raising student achievement in the classroom,” he said.

Hence, diversity is about allowing students to see folks like them and to help students understand there are also folks who are different.

Feedly and Evernote are two of my most heavily used apps. Feedly is my RSS reader and Evernote is my scrap/note book. Recently Feedly offered an easier way to save content to Evernote. There was simply a button that executed this action. The Feedly feature I use presently takes advantage of an Evernote feature that stores information sent to an Evernote email address.

I do most of my reading using the iPad. When I attempted to use the Feedly to Evernote transfer I kept encountering an error message. No specific explanation for the error message, just an error message. I did eventually determine that you must purchase the Pro version of Feedly to enable this storage option. Feedly certainly does not owe me a free feature, but the app should explain the requirement for payment rather than generate an error message. It is obvious when attempting the same transfer on a laptop.

One comment about the Pro version of Feedly. I have this general complaint about many services – the gap between free and the lowest paid version of many services is too great. I am not going to pay $5 a month to use the automatic transfer to Evernote feature over the email method. I understand that other features come with the Pro level, but this was the only feature that seemed useful to me. Perhaps what I have in mind is too complicated to execute, but $60 a year for a more convenient method of interconnection of services seems too expensive.

It appears someone in North Dakota has become interested in textbook costs.

The average college student spends $655 on textbooks each year, according to the National Association of College Stores.

As I have indicated on multiple occasions, it is far more complicated (sometimes for fun and sometimes seriously). First, students resell their textbooks so the $665 cost over time actually is reduced by half. Economists probably have a term for the “actual” cost in contrast to the initial cost. Second. a textbook and other resources serve different functions. A textbook provides an integrated structure. Various YouTube or Merlot resources address topics. To equate a book with unrelated resources is comparing apples and oranges. While advanced students are expected to be able to impose a structure on multiple sources, this is a serious challenge for beginning students working outside of their areas of interest and knowledge. Anyway, it is complicated and simplistic solutions have more political appeal than educational benefit. As an instructor, I am far more concerned that students read the textbook they have purchased than what the book cost. Of course, if you do not read the book or attend class, the cost of the course and the book is too much.

I do not want to come across as defending the cost of textbooks. However, I do know far more than most about costs having written a commercial textbook and having offered low cost alternatives. Hence, I am always annoyed when those with little actual experience make pronouncements. Take any area for which there is a general public need – say medical care – there are always those who claim the costs are too high and someone must be compensated more than is appropriate. Why is it we complain about textbook costs as a political issue and not how much we had to pay for an x-ray the last time we visited the dentist? If these issues are real, it is worth a careful rather than a superficial look.