Legislation Promotes Growth of Digital Textbooks
Under new legislation, school districts for the first time can spend a portion of state “book” money on computer hardware and digital content. And the state can stockpile and open-source electronic material, made available free to all schools. Some, including State Board of Education members, fear the explosion of choice will produce an erosion of quality content.
In a historic shift, Texas public schools will soon start tapping the state’s multi-billion-dollar textbook fund for laptops and e-readers. A “book,” meanwhile, could become a living reservoir of content, freely edited and updated by educators and beamed to the classrooms, homes ...
Comments (7)
jrj
Outstanding work, thank you.
Ken Collier
This is an important issue and I appreciate the coverage. My worry is that the best interests of students will get lost in the dollar figures and politics flying around this issue.
I've been trying digital content in my college classes for a decade and the problem remains that students don't seem to read extended arguments in digital format. Anything that asks students to scroll down a page seems to be a problem. The limited attention span is an issue regardless of format. However, it seems to be much worse with the online materials I assign. Some of this is the expectations students seem to have about digital media. Some of the problem is that many of my students have limited access to technology (I know this isn't supposed to be the case for this generation).
There are a lot of issues to be resolved before we dive in.
AdamColligan
Following up on Ken, I think this is a very important point: making digital content delivery work is a large, multi-disciplinary endeavour that will require a whole vertical chain of projects to be done very well and line up just right. Just because the two sides are digging in as entrenched factions doesn't mean it's all black and white. The digital/open content/TEA camp clearly represents a broadly superior universe from which to draw content, manage the sharing of power between Austin and local districts, manage taxpayer funds, and deliver materials all the way down to the level of the classroom. Even if there are many good things to be said about tight central control of content quality, this camp still on the whole owns a better, and perhaps inevitable, future for these kinds of arrangements. (From the tone of the article, the TT seems to agree).
However, it's no good for the state to lay a superhighway all the way down to my street if my house is surrounded by a moat. And there are several key developments in content delivery *after* it's reached the classroom, when it makes the final jump to the student's eyes, that just aren't ready for prime time right now. Universities and companies are working on it, but no affordable digital display is yet as easy on the eys as a book: this can be key when you're trying to force 13-year-old boys to concentrate on long passages of history. For take-home materials, the readers that are market-ready now don't offer all of the advantages of physical durability, usability, and cost savings that you'd need them to.
And importantly, as Ken notes, we haven't solved the cultural problem about how people use electronic devices versus printed material. If Mike Smith is right about how clueless administrators are when it comes to children's interaction with technology as it stands, they have their work cut out for them if their task becomes to <i>combat</i> it. When the proponents of a digital switch in the article talk about what kids will be carrying their curriculum around in, they seem to be amalgamating the capabilities of a whole number of different potential devices. As of 2009, there isn't any single consumer electronics product that is cheap enough for the state to get into the hands of disadvantaged children all over Texas and fulfill everyone's wish list about interactivity. This doesn't mean that retrenching the system in this way is a *wrong* step, but it does mean that we should not necessarily expect it to be a democratizing step, the way it's touted. Paradoxically, an Austin-driven rollout of free electronic materials for children may, instead of closing the Digital Divide, end up highlighting just how wide it is across the state.
The new mantra may be collective, grassroots control, but the TEA had better have a strong critical think about how to get the most out of its new authority at the top level.
jackiegir
I want to let reader's know that Texas has made it possible for home-schoolers to enroll in a virtual public school. Houston ISD is the sponsoring entity; Connections Academy is the provider. My daughter began in December 2008 and is now in 5th grade. It is free and must comply with all Texas public school requirements (TAKS tests). I haven't seen any articles on this except in the Houston Chronicle but I would like to. We are pleased with the program but I would love to know more background about it from an impartial observer.
waynehartman
California has done something similar with open source digital textbooks. In some regards, they met California's standards better than their commercial counterparts! This would be an interesting thing for Texas to do as well. See also: http://www.clrn.org/fdti/
ravenshroud
Leave it to a Democrat to finally save our state some money. I am sure Republicans will get credit somehow.
westernmassjimbo
I've been an editor and writer in the textbook industry for many years now, working under contract for the most part, to the big publishers not as a direct employee. I think clearly the big publishers have not done a good job of pricing and they have let their internal quality standards fall over the years. Still, the content of a textbook I think has proven very valuable to students, especially those that are average or struggling, and to average or struggling teachers. Although much of the content, such as the Federalist Papers, is indeed free, if there is not background information, instructional notes, explanations of skills needed to grasp the content, and so on, many students and teachers will not have any idea how to approach, much less even begin to read, such daunting works as these. There is real value in textbooks and it's important not to forget that. There are indeed problems, but the value is there and when something is free, well, you do indeed get the quality you pay for. The potential here is good, but it's important not to lose sight of the students and the teachers in the equation.