"Obama administration wants all students using digital textbooks in five years" - headline from the Verge. Read the comments as they are very interesting.
My reaction: " we don't even have money for the basics, like paper textbooks, computers, lab equipment, paper, teachers!, etc. So where does the money come from for 1:1 computing devices for every student, the digital textbooks (which have to be purchased again every year), support for the devices, replacement devices for damage, loss, and theft, etc." Many of my students don't even have a computer at home, let alone a portable device like a smartphone, laptop or tablet. How are they going to access the digital textbooks without a digital device? Will they really all have a device in 5 years? Paper textbooks offer an option for students and districts without digital resources.
It's a lofty idea that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Education budgets are being cut left and right and then this. Not sure how this idea can work.
I've already discussed my reaction to Apple's iBooks announcement and how I don't use textbooks with my physics students anyway, but this article got me going again. Are digital textbooks really a worthwhile use of shrinking education budgets? I don't think so. Let's look more at project based learning, free online digital resources and teacher created resources instead.
What do you think?
Related:
What I use with Physics classes instead of textbook
We've had this discussion in our school. Without question, moving to e-books is an expensive venture. But: (1)the current books we use in most of our classes are not free, (2)as the costs of tablets/e-readers continues to fall, purchasing e-books and e-readers (even iPads someday?) for students may become cost effective. Unquestionably there are still concerns (tablets break; do students "keep" the e-books?; etc.), but the notion of e-books is not a crazy as it once sounded, either in terms of costs or in other ways.
ReplyDeleteYes, the books we have now are not free and if the e-book prices are kept low enough, the fact that they have to be repurchased every year is not a big deal.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is access to computers and devices to read these e-books. Many districts are broke, laying off staff, and cutting things. If teachers use what's available for free to add to their classrooms and use the textbooks they have as one source of information for the students, they can get by.
My main issue is where is the money for the devices coming from?