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Free Digital Textbook Initiative: Responding to the Chronicle
June 4, 2009 | Tagged CLRN, disruptive innovation, open source, textbook | 1 Comment
The San Francisco Chronicle’s June 3rd article, “Free digital book plan costly, educators say“, is a well intentioned but misguided attempt to think deeply about the Governor’s Free Digital Textbook Initiative. Unfortunately, the article’s author fails to consider a variety of factors: What is the current state of textbook publishing?; What are the factors that are bringing digital textbooks, particularly open source books, to the forefront?; What are the benefits and concerns about using digital textbooks in schools? and How will a technology-enhanced or delivered textbook benefit teaching and learning?
I’d like to address the author’s primary thesis: “Critics said any savings from free online books would be lost to the technology expenses.”
The Free Digital Textbook Initiative is currently focusing only on those free textbooks that can be downloaded, meaning that school districts have the option to print the textbook in book form or place it on some type of e-reader, which would include laptops, mobile devices, or a commercial e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle. While printing out a digital text may seem to be taking a step backwards, districts would save money by not having to purchase a book from a commercial vendor. A commercial textbook can cost more than $100, but districts could print an 800 page book for less than $35, which despite the Chronicle’s criticism, is a substantial amount in today’s climate. Every dollar saved as a result of this initiative is a dollar better utilized by our schools.
Free Digital Textbook Initiative Open Source CLRN
Comments
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I would like to start with “best of luck” to you and your efforts with this Free Digital Textbook Initiative. Thanks !
As I learn more about CLRN, I was surprised that a search of your blog for the term “EPUB” returns no matches. Perhaps I simply confused, but I can imagine a future of Digital textbooks without supporting a open source standard file format like EPUB, but perhaps I am not understanding what CLRN use case is.
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