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In December of 2012 TechCrunch ran an article called Why Magazine Apps Suck.
Earlier in 2012, News Corporation shut down its iPad only magazine The Daily, a digital-only publication that was reported to be losing $30 million a year.
This week I saw an ad for Texture - an app that gives access to a couple hundred magazines for $9.99 a month. ($14.99 for premium access, which I think means the ability to search back issues).
Do you know anyone who subscribes to a monthly tablet magazine service? I don’t.
Reading a magazine, it turns out, is a terrible experience on an iPad.
The fact that tablet based magazines and apps have gone nowhere should be a cautionary tale for us digital learning enthusiasts.
Is it possible that we are trying to do the same thing for education as media people have been trying to do for magazines?
Are we equally guilty as the folks behind The Daily and Texture in trying to shove something that wants to be analog - teaching and learning - through a digital hole?
What the failure of apps to replace paper magazines might be trying to tell us is that we need to be very selective in what we choose to make digital.
Graduate education and courses for full-time working adults work very well when the classroom is mainly online - although low-residency is always best. A traditional undergraduate degree for 18 to 22 year olds is a bundle of intellectual, personal, and emotional growth - and will forever (I’d argue) work best as a residential experience.
Many of us in the digital learning world are excited to see textbooks and other course readings finally make the move from paper to digital. We think that digital course materials lowers costs, while creating the opportunity to bundle material and instructional costs, therefore ensuring that all students have access to the same materials. Integrating text with simulations, videos, formative assessments, and community features - as opposed to a static textbook - still gets many of us excited. And the idea that digital may be a catalyst for open educational materials remains a commonly shared dream within my community.
The problem with digital course materials is that many of our students don’t want to give up their paper books and printed articles. They learn better with paper. They don’t want their course materials to be accessed from a screen anymore than I want to read The Economist on an iPad.
The future of digital education will be the conservation of the best of analog learning.
The most effective digital learning leaders will be defenders of material, physical, and face-to-face education.
Our educational default should be atoms, not bits. Physical, tangible and material educational practices have been evolving for a long-time.
Digital learning works well only when it starts from a place of profound respect and understanding for the face-to-face craft and material legacy of education.
We can leverage digital to improve learning, but we need to tread cautiously lest we end up the educational equivalent of The Daily.
What do you think is the future of analog education?
