Jul
10
Free Digital Textbook Initiative: One Very Probable Model
July 10, 2009 | Tagged CLRN, disruptive innovation, Free Digital Textbook Initiative | 4 Comments
First, i must respond to a tweet from NECC about the textbook revolution that said, “The textbook publishers represented at #NECC09 just don’t get digital textbooks. Paper textbooks are the walking dead; adapt.” Well, yes and no. While the CD model for purchasing music is on life support, disruptive innovations don’t always kill off the original model. AM radio survives, albeit with a very different audience. However, paradigms change slowly. Let’s return to a different example from the music industry before I launch into my thoughts about a probable model for a disruptive textbook.
Remember Napster, the music sharing, some would stay “stealing”, service that thrived from 1999 until 2001? Napster didn’t kill the CD. It was, instead, the warning shot across the music industry’s bow that boldly said, “Times. They are a changing.” The music industry didn’t get it though, because they didn’t grasp that the paradigm was shifting under their feet. They attacked the effect rather than focus on the cause, which was a disruptive innovation called digital music. I can’t tell if the the textbook publishing industry will react similarly, but i suspect they’re smarter. I certainly think Pearson, a major textbook publisher, understands the shift since our Pearson contact has a copy of Christensen’s “Disrupting Class”. I’m also believe that the Association of Educational Publishers understands the shift from the conference presentations listed on their web site. How publishers react and what they create to respond to the new model is still to be seen. I have hope, though.
Discovering the new Model
For a hint a where textbooks are heading, consider what happened to the educational video industry ten years ago.The industry was dying a slow death as an increasing number of school districts opted out of participating in their county video consortiums, a model similar to having one Blockbuster in each county that sends you videos that you request. The primary problem, though, was that the county Blockbuster had its own overhead and shipping costs. In addition, if the county didn’t constantly purchase new educational videos, educators became less interested since the content wasn’t fresh.
Then, the disruptive innovation hit and one company not only “got it”, but transformed the entire industry overnight. The concept, streaming video, was capitalized upon by United Learning, who named their new product, United Streaming. They didn’t just put entire videos online, though. Understanding the medium’s potential, they broke each video into chapters, annotated a description of each segment, and defined content standards for the segment. The powerful result is that educators can search for video clips that teach a specific concept or standard and show, or embed, just those clips during a lesson. Almost overnight, educators saw the value and schools and districts began subscribing to United Streaming’s service, which is now called Discovery Streaming. Rather than purchase the video or order it from the county, wait for delivery, and then show the entire video to a class, this new model allowed for instant access to clips that teach specific standards. Call it, Just In Time lesson planning.
e-Learning Textbooks
I believe this is a viable model for the textbook industry, but because their resources cover a complete course of study, the textbook industry has the potential to connect all the technology and active learning dots as they create the new and improved online textbook.
Current textbooks are printed and linear. They have a table of contents, chapters, and an index. Like instructional videos, a good part of their cost is in book’s printing and distribution. However, if textbooks were like Discovery Streaming, what would they look like?
An online textbook begins with the publisher’s most valuable resource, quality content. However, like physical videos, textbooks don’t have to be linear. Yes, in math, “A” must be learned before “B” so that you can use both when you learn “C.” What happens, though, when a student doesn’t quite understand “A” at the end of the chapter? Are they prepared to learn “B” or will their lack of a full understanding frustrate them and help them fall further behind? A flat, linear, paper textbook doesn’t know the student is having trouble and can’t provide additional help.
However, an online textbook can. A search engine can point teachers and students to all text, activities, and assessments surrounding a specific standard, just as customers of Discovery Streaming can. An e-Learning textbook can contain interactive exercises, video clips, and activities that help teach a concept. Embedded assessments can determine whether a student is prepared to learn “B.” If not, the “book” can direct the student to additional supplemental activities, videos, and text that can help clarify the concept or teach it from another direction or brain strength. Paper can’t do that.
My advice to textbook publishers would be to find the best publisher of online, supplemental electronic learning resources (see CLRN’s reviews), buy their company, and then work to incorporate interactive components into your new, online textbooks. It’s what’s next.
disruptive innovation free digital textbook initiative CLRN
Comments
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)4 Comments so far
While what the new economic structure of textbook publishing (and publishing in general) still seems a world of frightening unknowns, your vision of the future of the textbook is far more appealing to think about for anyone concerned about the future of the industry! I share a lot of these same thoughts. It seems to me that rather than being a kind of monolith that tries to achieve the impossible goal of being completely comprehensive and all things to all people, the textbook should become an interactive portal to learning, much like you describe. It should have well-written standards-aligned modular core content, but it should also make it easy for teachers and students to find helpful supplementary content and provide built-in mechanisms for differentiating instruction and assessment beyond the little sidebars, etc. found in print textbooks.
And I suspect that if publishers are smart, they will not restrict that content to their own product lines. Just as Tor Books (http://store.tor.com/) now carries books in their store from competing publishers, in the future textbook publishers may very well be judged based on how well they can help educators find quality content, even if it is not necessarily their own.
It also seems to me that as long as the digital transition is still occurring and things are still in flux, the winning publisher or publishers will have to be able to provide content in any number of formats, from online to audio to print to hybrid models. Flat World Knowledge is a great example of this idea, and it seems to me that will be important for reaching as many districts as possible and helping to bring them along into the digital age.
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Brian-
Great post. I recently heard a textbook publisher say, “We’re not taking this (digital online textbooks) seriously. After all, how are schools going to provide access to these books in this economy? Its not like they can afford computers with these budgets.” Apparently, they haven’t thought about all those iPhones, iPods, and PSPs hiding in the student backpacks…or the laptops they could bring from home. Your model makes a lot of sense and I think will likely be the path for the successful textbook companies of the future.
Joe
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In thinking about access to these electronic ‘books’, I recently heard that Sprint will be offering a brand name (HP, Dell, etc.) netbook for 99 cents with a 2 year subscription. This info came from Bruce Wilcox out of San Diego, one who follows such trends. The monthly subscription being considered is $60 per month. If this was covered under E-Rate, it may go as low as $6 per month or $75 per year. Now fast forward a few years, might a school district have their teachers, staff and administration all running as they do today on a LAN running Exchange and the students are all on the telco netbook system, operating 24/7 using cloud computing???? For a business model, it is not the razor but the blade that counts. Give the device away and make your money on the subscription. Just a thought……
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