The case for e-textbooks in K-12: Let’s REQUIRE them
Sick of having your kid lug around heavy, back-straining textbooks? Here’s an uppity thought. The feds or the states might think about requiring use of e-books in local school districts.
We’re talking about children’s brains and backs alike. And it isn’t as if the technology is as expensive as it used to be, especially compared to textbook replacement costs. Besides, as I can verify first-hand, from reading e-books hour after hour, the screen technology is much better these days. Perhaps schools could have a lenient deadline to make the transition without busting budgets. Legislators could respect the usual textbook replacement cycles and allow time for the gadgetry to improve even more.
Besides, with so much material about to be made available in e-formats for blind students, why not think about the same for others?
No need to be doctrinaire. The very youngest kids could still start out with paper books. And as I’ve noted earlier, schools could let the students use PDAs, tablets or other machines, depending on their needs.
Meanwhile, TeleRead CTO James Linden has posted a variant of the article below to Geek.com–following an earlier rant by “a Disgruntled high school student.” – David Rothman.
A textbook case for technology
By James Linden
I’ve been a complete geek since I was old enough to even say the word. I would have loved to have PDA and eBook technology available when I was in high school.
When making digital formats available, publishers can actually increase their profit margin. Because of reduction of production costs (paper, ink, etc.), electronic formats could be cheaper than textbooks, but in the bigger picture, provide the better profit margin. Distribution is wholly online, or cheap-to-ship CDs, and not thousands of pounds of paper books. This significantly cuts down on distribution costs as well.
Futher savings can be made on the publishing end when new editions are needed, as they can quite easily issue addendums and/or partial replacements (depending on the file format), instead of incurring a whole new round of production and distribution costs. This would make it much more economical to keep the textbooks up to date – which is a serious problem in schools. I often had arguments with my teachers because new facts contradicted the science books.
The matter of backups for electronic media is quite simple to take care of. While initially, it might be costly to setup, having a couple of kiosks in school hallways or offices would make it quite simple for a student to reload their particular etextbooks if they upgraded their personal PDA, or the file became corrupted, etc. Backups on the school level are even less complex.
The simple facts are:
A) CDs are cheaper and more efficient to create, store, distribute, and replace.
B) PDA technology (Hiebook, eBookMan, Palm, PocketPC based) is getting cheaper and cheaper.
C) File management for archives, along with appropriate DRM standards are not that complex to work out.
D) In a work world which is almost completely immersed in technology in almost every field, the use of such technology in high schools would surely better prepare our students for the “real world.” No, students should not learn to completely rely on calculators and spell-checkers, but face it, everyone else does.
E) A custom eTextbook device could be engineered to meet the specific needs of such a system. The sheer market size for such a device would make it very cheap when purchased in large quantities (at a school system, county, or state level).
F) Most of the software infrastructure for such a system (eTextbook device included) is, or can be made, available via open source licenses.
Really, the only things keeping such a large technology advancement out of our schools are greedy companies and timid politicians.
Additional comments from David Rothman: Actually, I suspect, some of the better publishers would welcome the legislation I’ve mentioned. And the others? Ignorance can be as much if not more of a problem than greed. I can remember the time when publishers found it hard to envision e-books being displayed on a machine other than a desktop.
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