Seth Godin has a very-perceptive analysis of the future of textbooks in an era of digitally-mediated, open-access scholarship. His vision of textbooks that comprise a selection of chapters and mini-essays rings quite true, and affords some advantages even he doesn’t specify. (OK, having offered several glowing compliments to Seth Godin, who doesn’t even need or care about my praise, is it too petty of me to note that I posted a version of his idea five years ago, and sketched it in greater detail to several granting agencies (in vain)? Yes, it is, but I’ve gone and done it anyway.)
(Oh, and I’m sorry that link takes you to a static page whose style sheet seems to have gone cattywumpus. It’s an aftereffect of the big Movable Type crash that impelled me to convert to WordPress, and I haven’t had the determination or support to go back and scrape all my earlier entries to appear in the WordPress version — which is a shame, since it means comments are effectively closed, and the spam comments are left in there forever, though in a more nearly perfect world I’d like to purge them.)
thanks for reading it, and sorry for stealing your thunder from five years ago!
AKMA – not only are you a New Testament scholar and Greek expert – and really, really good teacher too – but I totally love that you use the word “cattywumpus”.
You rock!
Congrats to the newly married couple! And I join others in praying for your employment to work out well and soon.