Oct
29
Digital Textbooks: Is it a Revolution if Everyone is on the Same Side?
October 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment
After I wrote about Oregon’s adoption of an online, interactive textbook, Nancy Silva correctly reminded me that California has also opened the door to electronic textbooks. In 2007, California’s State Board of Education adopted no less than 15 digital-only textbook series for mathematics from nine publishers. While the great majority are CD or DVD-based, several [...]
Aug
9
Below are my comments from CETPA’s Free Digital Textbook Initiative event at the Orange County Department of Education on August 11th.
CLRN is proud to have participated in the Free Digital Textbook Initiative and to have led the reviews. We are looking forward to announcing our phase two objectives.
Digital Textbooks are a disruptive innovation, part of [...]
Jul
24
“Experts split on ‘Kindle in Every Backpack” goes the headline from the July 24th eSchool News. This controversy over standardizing on an eReader platform is a nice starting point for discussing the future of books and whether we should provide students the technologies to access them. Let’s begin with Peter Von Stackelberg’s comment that “Paper-based [...]
Jul
10
Free Digital Textbook Initiative: One Very Probable Model
July 10, 2009 | 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 [...]
Jun
29
Free Digital Textbook Initiative: The New Model
June 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Today’s post is about how I believe the textbook industry’s upcoming changes will parallel those that emerged from the music industry, which is just completing their morphing. I’d like to thank several of you who commented, particularly “Zingy Learning” who tweeted, “I’m wondering, even if the publishing companies moved to digital media would they be [...]
Jun
23
Free Digital Textbook Initiative: It’s not about Money.
June 23, 2009 | 3 Comments
That’s right. California’s free digital textbook initiative is not about the money districts can save.
Yes, i know what the Governor said. Yes, i know the criticism the initiative has taken regarding doubts of cost savings. However, those doubts, as I’ve already written about, are unfounded. A free, high-quality textbook trumps a $100 high-quality textbook any [...]
Jun
4
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 [...]
