Providing Prescriptive Digital Content to All Students: One Student - One Book versus All Students - One Book.

Introduction

The Touch User Interface (TUI) technology may have promise to enable teachers and school districts to design and deliver customized textbooks and supplemental instructional materials to students. This may be a tremendous solution for helping schools become No Child Left Behind (NCLB) compliant, particularly with the underlying requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The TUI technology enables the reader to press pictures/words (TUIs) on paper or pages in a book and connect to digital content, either wirelessly or wired (tethered). A special needs student with nothing more than a pointer attached to a head harness can connect to digital content by pressing the TUIs. Conversely, a student who is pentadactyl can connect to digital content by pressing the TUIs with her fingers.

Figure 1 indicates a topology for a TUI-enabled textbook with three different digital appliances ≠ a PC/Mac, TV/DVD, and PDA.

Figure 1: Appliance Interaction Architecture

Prescriptive Content for All Students

When a patient presents to a physician with a compliant, the physician offers a diagnosis and prescription.  We are poised to do this with textbooks.  A teacher can diagnose and prescribe a textbook written to the student's learning style, disability, and ability level.  That prescription is sent to a "pharmacy" where the book is customized to meet the teacher's prescription and returned to the practitioner for distribution to the student. As a result, a new model for distributing educational content can evolve.

This new model is best described as one-student and one book instead of all-students and one book. The enabler for this model of customized content distribution is a new technology that allows a student to press pictures and/or words on the printed page in the book that then connects wirelessly to the digital content. This allows front-end, paper-based content to serve as a remote control to back-end, digital content.

We will demonstrate this technology and discuss the customized, prescriptive model. We will also offer some other related discussions including tracking book usage and reducing the dependency on future book editions.

Why a Prescriptive Publishing Model?

The current education model has a relatively expensive generic textbook delivered to the school.  It is then incumbent upon the teacher to modify the textbook for the needs of the students.  Frequently this modification does not occur.  Further, whatever modification does occur is rather limited.  Just as a student would receive a prescription for a medication from a physician that is in accordance with that studentπs diagnosis, textbooks should be similarly customized and distributed.

For example:

1. If a student does not have a computer then the teacher can prescribe a textbook that connects to a DVD attached to a TV.

2. If the student has a visual disability then the teacher can prescribe large print (or Braille) that connects to auditory digital content.

3. If the student has a hearing disability then the content the student connects to can be sub-captioned, American Sign Language (ASL), or text.

Prescriptive Service Flow

Many users of the Western medical system might not like the idea of åone drug fits allπ. Similarly, teachers may not like the åone book fits allπ scheme that is currently in place. Since the content is expensive and controlled by large bureaucracies many of the books may be placed in the education market as one book for all.

Figure 2 illustrates the medicinal system as an analog of the proposed TUI publishing model. If we consider the American medical model, the patient, diagnosed/evaluated by a care provider with prescription rights is offered a drug solution for a diagnosed problem. The care provider seldom supplies directly the drug to the patient due to logistical and accountability issues. The prescription makes its way to the pharmacy. The pharmacy is responsible for ensuring accountability, proper dosage assignment, and avoidance of interaction with other medications.

Once the pharmacy completes filling the order the patient moves on with life checking in with the primary care provider for treatment results.

Figure 2:  Prescriptive Service Flow

Similarly, as Figure 3 demonstrates, the TUI prescriptive service flow has the teacher, in the capacity of the primary care provider, diagnosing (perhaps in conjunction with a team) a student's learning styles and/or special needs. If the student has a visual defect then the teacher "prescribes" a textbook with Braille front-end content and auditory back-end content. This prescription goes to the publishing that aggregates the content from content providers and pushes back a book tailored to the studentπs needs in accordance with the order from the teacher.

Figure 3: Prescriptive Publishing Model

TUI System Architecture

A promise of touch user interface (TUI) technology is the ability to invert the current publishing paradigm. Content placed on the front-end (paper) can be static while the back-end content can be dynamic.

Figure 4 indicates the architecture that allows for decentralized publishing where the book remains static and the back-end (digital) content is updated. Figure 5 shows the system.

Figure 4: Touch User Interface (TUI) Implementation Architecture

Figure 5: Touch User Interface (TUI) Implementation Architecture

Summary

By offering a prescriptive service that tailors textbooks and connected content to the individual student, a new model for distributing digital content to student can evolve.  This model is an open-source publishing model where the decisions about content are made at the decentralized local level, not at the centralized publishing level. The end-user has significantly more control over the amount, placement, and types of content than may be currently available. Further, because control for content is residing at the local level, meeting local, State, and perhaps national academic standards may be more attainable.

This model of local control coupled with customizing textbooks may replace the current model that sends a general textbook into the student environment that must be modified for the student (in the case of IEPs).  For the mainstream student, the generalized textbook may be boring at best and at the worst it may not connect to the studentπs learning style.  Not only may the TUI bring a customized book to the teacher/student team, but it may be able provide more content for less money.