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California To Move To Online Textbooks
Hugh Pickens writes "Last year California spent $350m on textbooks so facing a state budget shortfall of $24.3 billion, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has unveiled a plan to save money by phasing out 'antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks' in favor of internet aids. Schwarzenegger believes internet activities such as Facebook, Twitter and downloading to iPods show that young people are the first to adopt new online technologies and that the internet is the best way to learn in classrooms so from the beginning of the school year in August, math and science students in California's high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review. 'It's nonsensical — and expensive — to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form,' writes Schwarzenegger. 'As the music and newspaper industries will attest, those who adapt quickly to changing consumer and business demands will thrive in our increasingly digital society and worldwide economy. Digital textbooks can help us achieve those goals and ensure that California's students continue to thrive in the global marketplace.'"
So are they gonna provide students a method of using these electronic resources, like a OLPC?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
As the music and newspaper industries will attest, those who adapt quickly to changing consumer and business demands will thrive in our increasingly digital society and worldwide economy.
Is it just me or did anybody else parse this sentence as "Let's not fail in life like the music and newspaper industries and actually use internet for our gain instead of hopelessly fighting it"? Is he giving the music/news industry attitude!? :D
I am the lawn!
'It's nonsensical -- and expensive -- to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form,'
Yes, but online textbooks if they don't come with a hard-bound textbook are a bad idea. Already in schools whenever there is an internet outage, virus outbreak, etc. The school basically shuts down in the fact that teachers can't enter in grades, etc. But now the teachers couldn't teach. Then what happens if for some reason these textbooks are not cross platform? What if they restrict access to only Windows machines, or Windows and Mac? What happens whenever a student's computer breaks so they can't do the assignment or if they can only afford low-speed internet or that is all that is offered where they live? What happens if their computer is too old to properly render the site? What happens if the computer lab's hours are inconvenient for said students (for example an after school job where they usually work with their physical textbook during down time)? Take the old saying "my printer broke" and multiply it by a few thousand and thats going to be the result of this program if they do not mandate having a physical textbook.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
OK, here's what's going to happen: initially, the publishers will charge low bulk rates to get everyone to switch over. After that, they'll introduce higher, per-student access fees. Oh, yeah, and don't even think about mixing and matching online books from different publishers. Fees for a single book will be so exorbitant, that the only way you'll be able to afford this is to buy the whole K-12 package. Just ask any university librarian about that business model...
Do not use computers just as substitute for books, use them to help with visualization not previously possible in books. I.e., animations, interactive materials, etc, etc. I know this is just a first step and too many features at once would delay the project, but it's just something to keep one's mind on.
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
They're not expensive if you use them and amortized over quite a few years. I went to a Catholic elementary school. ALL of our books were hand-me-downs of Public school books and at least 2-3 editions old.
Unless I haven't been paying attention, Geometry, Calculus, WWII, the Roman Empire, Mitosis, etc hasn't changed much in the last few years. We were also required to have all books covered. They last quite a bit longer if you do this. I know that when I switched to a public school I had the EXACT same history book, it just happened to be 2 editions newer. Other than a few minor editorial changes, I didn't see anything different to my 7th grade mind.
The problem isn't that books are expensive, it's that they keep buying new ones when the old ones aren't obsolete. Moving online isn't going to help unless they use OSS textbooks. Book publishers are going to love this. Instead of buying a book every year for 120$ they're going to give you a wonderful discount of an online book every year for only 50$.
Use the books until covers are falling off. Mandate that book publishers MUST keep publishing an edition X years after it is first published. This will eliminate 'prebuys' to try and cover all books that are expected to be lost or damaged. It'll also let a school use the same book for 10, 15 years. A $100 text book over 15 years isn't too expensive.
Unfortunately 10-15 years is at least one election cycle and everyone will forget what the person they replaced did and it'll be all shiny text books for all "please think of the Children".
The whole reason the Gubinator is talking about online books is because CA has a budget deficit that is bigger than the GNP of a lot of countries. It's a pretty safe bet they aren't buying each kid a laptop. And before someone trots out "oh, it's only a one time expense of $250 or $300", remember, the books are neither going to be free to buy or freely redistributable, and you are dealing with children who are pretty good at losing stuff, forgetting stuff, and trashing stuff. This is one of those "look at me I'm tech savvy" feel good initiatives that is either going to go absolutely nowhere, or is going to further the gap between the haves and the have-nots
So how do you take the approved textbook into a restricted-text exam? How do you make notes in the margin? Are you supposed to print out relevant parts and bring them to use in class? When you're finished with it, can you re-sell it if you don't need it? What if you want to keep it? Have you bought it, or does the license stay with the school? I'd still rather stick with paper textbooks. It's great to have access to online reference material, but that's not what a textbook is for.
Though the screens are getting better, many people find it much easier to read off paper than a monitor, including people who've grown up with computers, so I don't think it's a habit thing. And all my textbooks are full of annotations, I can't imagine there's a piece of software that makes it easier than quickly scrawling/drawing in the margin of a book, without me having to go out and acquaint myself with a tablet of some sort.
This is a good idea, but it won't save any money, this year at least. Now you have to undergo a major project to source ebooks that are suitable, find the proper distribution method, ensure all schools have the technical capability to allow every student to access these books (at the same time no less - so no sharing computers/internet connections). Teachers might all be teaching out of new books, with new errata, and a new "feel". There are a ton of things to think about.
I like the idea, but the thought that this will be a money saver in the short term is, well, short sighted.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
That is exactly what is going to happen, and the era of reusing textbooks year after year will come to and end. With some subjects, it makes sense to get the most up to date material each year -- geography, politics, etc. -- but with others, it does not -- math, basic physics (not college level QM), etc. Why should schools be forced to pay for new subscriptions every year for material that is not changing?
Palm trees and 8
Producing soft-cover books (I've never made a hard cover) is trivial. The cost of these books isn't the printing cost, it's the copyright. Use Open Source textbooks.
Textbooks are a big business. And a dirty one: just see Richard Feynman's experience
There are some courses, like literature, where the primary textbook is something best read curled up in a chair.
There are others, such as some sciences, economics, and anything involving current events or current technology, where textbooks are obsolete before they are printed.
There are still others, like PE, some fine arts, and most vocational training, where traditional textbooks were never an issue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Unbiased? Maybe it's different in the States, but when I left school in South Africa and did some "real world" reading, I quickly realised just how biased my state education actually was. From what I can tell, the same is true here in the UK, albeit a bit more subtle. My history education, just for starters, was a pile of garbage, maintaining the State view of "black people were completely useless until the white men came", while even learning a language like Zulu was skewed: the only things we learnt was crap like "Clean the windows", and "Make me tea", emphasising the attitude of master-servant.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
My first impression from this is: Arnold is passing off a pro-industry decision as a pro-California one. I am skeptical.
I'm working on my PhD in History, and to help pay the bills I teach both classroom and online history courses. The institution I teach online courses for recently moved from requiring students to purchase the course text to providing them an online version with the class, while offering students the option to purchase custom hard copies. Students can purchase the full, hardback, color version, can select monochrome versions, or get paperback or plastic comb bindings. Sounds great, right?
Not so much.
The vendor provides students with a login ID and password for each student to use, which gets them access to the book for six months after the end of the course. The textbook website has integrated learning tools, skills assessments, maps, images, audio and video, etc... along with the text, which is properly paginated to go with my desk copy. Again, this stuff all sounds great. In practice, there are problems.
Students complain that it takes them double or triple the time to do their reading. Sending them login ID and password was a catastrophe, because they were provided by email, and not all students gave us the correct email address or knew that they had a school-supplied email address. This led the school to just embed a link to the text in our courses, which killed much of the interactivity built into the online text.
This ignores other problems. Student computer type and age, patch level, apps, skill level, whether they have their own machine, comfort with updating their computer, etc... have a huge effect on whether a student can successfully use an online text. I teach students that range from high school age into their sixties. Most of them are not comfortable troubleshooting problems, communicating problems, or even understanding that they have a problem. There are students whose parents won't let them install Flash or other media players on the family PC.
Unless Schwarzenegger is talking about providing all students with a Kindle DX (in color) or some similar device with free wireless broadband to access their texts, we're talking about huge administrative burdens, tech support burdens, and even financial burdens for families. The support ecosystem is just just not available for most folks to successfully use an online text for all of their courses.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. -- Jerry Pournelle
This is actually starting to happen on my campus. Right now we have one set method of providing online courses through a learning management system (moodle) and a pilot of streaming the video and slides or providing downloadable audio podcasts of lectures. We are piloting another system this coming fall that should be more scalable.
The problem is a bit two-fold. My department has been tasked with managing and supporting all of these applications. We have a skeleton staff as it is, and with the budget cuts it's getting harder to justify the money to hire student assistants (even through financial aid). Right now I've been placed in charge of mapping out our help desk for these applications with three students and myself doing the support work for 1,700 faculty and way too many students (about 30,000? I don't remember the number). College departments are coming to us to put materials online because they cannot afford paper. They have no interest in actually progressing and moving into the 21st century, but are forced to digitize materials due to lack of funds. If it were up to some of these departments, we'd still be using chalk on slates.
The other part of the problem is actually maintaining the systems. We have three system administrators who have to balance time with supporting the servers running the applications and our internal office networks. These people, unfortunately, also get "borrowed" by whatever department on campus needs to supplement their IT staff (or lack thereof) when doing academically related projects. All of this with a shrinking budget and absurdly high expectations from the University.
All this talk and movement of materials online is great. It provides more access to students exactly in your situation that would prefer learning at his or her own pace and time. Our campus is a major commuter school and apparently 80% of our students work on top of full loads of classes, with something like 60% of those working full time. Being able to do course materials (for the most part) without coming on to campus is a big plus. However, people also need to realize that doing this also shifts the pain of funding books monetarily onto departments that are already stretched to capacity.
From a licensing standpoint then, a digital publisher, with non-existent manufacturing costs, can license a professionally written textbook at a cost of $5 a student rather then $30.
They can, but will they? Hint: an e-book for the Kindle costs as much or more than the paperback edition. Why? Because they can. (Unless the California state actually employs some people to write public domain textbooks. That would be great. But don't hold your breath.)
Assuming the laptops are usable for 5 years the cost saving are INSAINE. We are talking slashing at least $200 dollars PER STUDENT PER 5 YEAR PERIOD.
So that would be $40/year/student out of budget of $10,000/year - savings of 0.4%, even in the wildly optimistic case that all of these e-book readers will need no paid personnel to maintain it and will last 5 years in the hands of 10-year-olds... Not that enticing, I'd think.
I've never seen a book crash.
I've never seen a book show a mysterious error message, or ask me to contact my administrator.
I've never seen a computer I could replace for under £20.
I've read - hell, I own - books older than the oldest personal computer in history. They still work.
I've seen plenty of books get wet, but once they're dry they're fine. Even if the pages are a little stiff.
I've never seen a book come delivered on the understanding I don't pass it on to anyone else once I'm done with it.
I've never seen a book which would stop working as soon as there was a power cut.
Nah, this is a silly idea. Technology for its' own sake is seldom the best answer.
Fact is that book will, in five years time, be as shitty as the other outdated data in the world.
Outdated in five years? Really? What exactly is being taught in high school these days cutting edge genetics or something?
Because Shakespeare hasn't changed in nearly 400 years. Classical mechanics, optics, Newton's laws, etc. haven't changed in hundreds of years either. I have a calculus book from the 1920s and it is still as relevant if not better than many calculus textbooks today. Kids should be learning fundamentals in high school. How to do math, how to read critically, how compose essays, etc. Books teaching those will not be outdated in five years or even fifty-five years.
A paper textbook has its advantages, for example: it doesn't require power (electricity, that is); it doesn't require an expensive electronic reader; it is not covered by DRM (I can lend it to a friend w/o RIAA et al. coming after me); and can be annotated with a pencil!
It doesn't HAVE to be that way. I'm on a local school board and I'm looking into this issue for my own district. Many, if not all over time, of the books may end up being "free"... MIT already produces books that are freely distributable, and there are other outfits starting up to do the "free" thing... here is one of them CK12.org One of the really cool features of a system like this is that teachers can modify their textbooks to suit their curriculum, allowing them to custom build textbooks if they wish
The economics of this proposal is compelling. If the books can be put on a netbook, I can save money day one by buying each student a cheap netbook (say $300)... My district already spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on textbooks each year. They go for something like $100 a pop. Granted, you can use them for more than one year - we generally get about 7 years of real useful life out of them. Then again, I can buy a netbook for a student, let them use it for the 4 years they are in high school, and GIVE it to them at the end and it still doesn't cost me a dime.
I'm a tech guy, so I understand there will be issues with support/breakage, but it isn't going to be very much more expensive than the "breakage" we already have in textbooks. And you can lock the desktops down to a great degree, such that the students don't have admin privileges. Install Defender and AVG and you have a pretty good package.
Also, if you are using local copies of books rather than relying on an Internet connection to get them, you can pretty much put that "digital divide" issue to bed. Students can sync up when in school and get assignments and other background materials from their WiFi connection, and while at school, or in the public libraries, use the Internet. For those that have it at home, it is a convenience, but not a necessity.
Finally, you now don't have to wonder if a student has access to a computer to write papers and do computer based assignments. They all have them. And thus, the "digital divide" problem, if not solved, has gone WAY down.
Overall, the proposal has a lot of merit and I'm hoping the rest of the nation can benefit from California's efforts here. It would be good to have a state like California to lead this effort, and then allow other districts in other states be able to leverage what they do.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
So no more little johnny getting his homework done in the car, or when he's stuck at grammas. And now we have to queue up behind his sisters and brothers while they do their homework on the one machine at home. That being said, and I haven't read the article, but the only way this would make any sense is if the state basically buys less books with an option to use an electronic one, somehow encouragine more people each year. You can't deny kids book access, and there are still quite a few people that don't own a computer. Especially in California which has a lot of low income immigrant workers. Education should be the great equalizer, not a divider between the haves and have-nots. This would actually be a great opportunity for the Kindle people to develop a cheap yet sturdy eBook platform. I would imagine that a massive sale like 'every student in california' be a pretty good bargaining to get a good deal. If they could sell it for ~$100/ea its probably well worth it. Or offer some sort of yearly lease or something else.
Are you a troll? Or just confused?
Who writes in the margins? Public schools at least try to minimize that, because the books get reused for several years. You don't want next year's kids reading this year's notes. Actually writing the notes is more of a benefit than reading something someone else wrote last year. How does PDF inhibit the ability to think?
What's the difference to the brain in reading computer text vs. book text? Are you thinking that students won't be tempted to visit iTunes or chat while reading a book? Think twice - that notebook next to them is always on, they'll do it regardless. Plus kids are getting used to doing things online - it makes sense to move away from textbooks as long as there is some sort of "appreciating of dead tree reading" being taught somewhere. Maybe moving away from that old part of the brain (if that's not something you just pulled out of your butt) is a good thing and will benefit us. Go make a study and let us know what you think with science behind you, not superstition.
What? This is public school, starting from a young age. You are probably thinking this is college. Not the case.
You are correct about one thing - some will benefit from this change, some won't. Public education is like that, since you can't serve everyone's needs completely within a reasonable budget.
Your entire rant seems like a knee-jerk reaction to new technology. Would you kindly read it again and tell me if I'm really all that wrong?
In grade school you are not expected to carry books home. They give out Readers or Workbooks which are cheaply printed and have just the take home materials in them. The textbooks stay in the class and get pulled out for reference and in-class use.
There is no good case for Textbooks at the grade school level.
California needs to negotiate a periodic license fee for a variety of material with optional updates. Purchase interactive white-boards which are simply big LCD displays with fairly cheap touch screen capability (doesn't need to be very accurate). Display lessons and material on these... with handouts as needed for supplementation and home study.
Grade school kids don't need textbooks at all. They need good teachers who can engage them in the lessons.
Junior High/Middle schools also do not need Textbooks but do need some form of personal access. Here they should have built-in units in the desks. Scratch resistant good touchscreens and a durable keyboard pad with a very basic OS that can handle accessing media, local network resources and a word processor nothing more. There is no access to the OS itself except the login prompt.
They don't need full access to the internet (or filtered access). Set up a proxy server that pulls in copies of various websites (wikipedia, discovery channel, etc) on a weekly basis. The teacher gets the same whiteboard but with full access to the internet to pull up current events or additional materials.
Again, handouts go home. These can be bulk printed to reduce costs each semester with a local printer. Each child still has the same access to learning materials as they've always had based on their families priorities. They can still stay after school to use the media desks, the library (with additional media desks) or ask the teacher questions.
High School takes Junior High and simply swaps out the media and provides more applications. High School doesn't need anything additional - never has. There are still computer labs for doing things on a computer - these are not computers, they are media desks.
Savings would include the Textbooks, all test taking materials and any costs related to Scantron type machines, any multi-media devices, a whole host of games and other learning materials that could be applications rather than physical items.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Furthermore, the entire curriculum could be on a CD (for those without internet) and distributed every year.
The biggest issue here is changing the infrastructure of the delivery of the information. Let's look closely at the lessons of the City of Munich and apply them at the state and school board level. Get rid of proprietary software for most users. Stabilize to a Linux-based platform (LTSP/OLPC?) and be done with huge hardware upgrade costs. Reduce (mostly eliminate) viruses. Give out older machines with OpenOffice and Linux to disadvantaged students. Level the playing field.
That's how you effect real change, but the reality is that it takes a huge will to do it. Long-term, the savings are permanent and irrefutable.
Knowledge is good.
*** Don't be dull.***
From what i've seen, eBooks aren't significantly cheaper than paperbacks and usually not much less than hardbacks.
Hopefully the californian system is big enough that they can recruit teachers within their own ranks to create their own open set of books, then they can drop the licensing costs which will otherwise surely cripple the system.
The economics of this proposal is compelling. If the books can be put on a netbook, I can save money day one by buying each student a cheap netbook (say $300)... My district already spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on textbooks each year. They go for something like $100 a pop. Granted, you can use them for more than one year - we generally get about 7 years of real useful life out of them. Then again, I can buy a netbook for a student, let them use it for the 4 years they are in high school, and GIVE it to them at the end and it still doesn't cost me a dime.
As a tech person you have to concede that these statements are incredibly optomistic.
...the kids don't destroy the equipment in a matter of weeks or months rather than years. ...you can get Microsoft/McAfee/Apple/Symantec/etc to provide free licensing for the required products. ...you can come up with a method of securing the OS against "unintended uses". ...you lo-jack every unit to mitigate theft. ...you assume the kids will fix their own machines and you won't need to hire additional IT staff for every school. ...you assume that there are not incidental and normal hardware failures requiring repair/replacement. ...you increase the infrastructure in every school to handle the thousands of connections rather than the few hundred previous connections. ...you disregard the cost for the build-out of all the hard LAN connections, or the purchase/deployment of WiFi in the schools on a scale that can handle thousands of students. ...you obtain contractural agreement with every school districts internet provider to compound the network bandwidth many fold at little or no additional ongoing cost. ...you have a fall-back for the inevitable network failures during school hours.
The optomism is proven realistic IF:
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And that's just the top 10 off the top of my head. And it doesn't really begin to address the administrative burdens, the accounting and inventory tracking burdens, the patching and updating burdens.....
In the end the residual costs associated with the deployment of MILLIONS of machines to inherently irresponsible and destructive kids would be unparalelled. Suggesting that any of it is a 'one-time cost' is wholly false. It's an adoption of dozens of on-going costs even if you get every software vendor, hardware manufacturer, and service provider to cough up the initial investments for free. Anyone that has worked in IT in any kind of an enterprise environment could go on forever telling you of the nightmares they've faced from non-tech managers mandating tech solutions that will 'save money', without understanding of the realities in the task.
It's an age-old scenario. The manager says, "Look, it's all just three simple steps. We make a rocket, fly it to the moon, and get it and the astronauts back. How hard is that? "
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Tax set to 1% of assessed value.
Assessed Value may only increase 2% per year.
When ownership changes, then the assessed value is reset to the market value.
Goto step 1.
This is a sensible and fair system that keeps people from being taxed out of their homes.
CA's problem is not lack of revenue, it is spending too much.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If there is another system that hasn't had to raise spending in 30 years, I'd like to see it.
I don't have a problem with spending going up. Obviously that's going to happen. Inflation if nothing else.
I have a problem when spending goes up by several times the inflation rate. NYS just passed a budget that increased spending four times over the inflation rate, using BHO's stimulus money. Before the stimulus money the state was flat broke and looking at cuts. Once they got it they decided to have a massive spending increase, thus kicking the eventual insolvency further down the road.
California has been doing the same for years.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Have any of you even read TFA? Of course not this is slashdot... The second link contains more interesting information, so I suggest everyone checks it out. But for the lazy...
Across the state and around the world, well-respected educators have designed customizable texts to meet the unique needs of their students. Federal grants have funded research that is free for public use. And now California has put out an initial call to content developers, asking that they submit high school math and science digital texts for our review. We hope the floodgates are open. We'll ensure the digital texts meet and exceed California's rigorous academic standards, and we'll post the results of our review online as a reference for high school districts to use in time for fall 2009.
First of all, this is for math(s) and science textbooks only. So don't worry about cuddling up with your English lit stuff on the couch, you can still do that. Second, this is an open call for submissions which will be up for approval. This most likely means that if there are honestly no satisfying submissions, this idea may get scrapped/postponed.
I think if these were down to earth, non-drm, popular/flexible format based ebooks that are not stuck in online-only mode and are downloadable, then there shouldn't be too many problems. Yeah, I'm curious about many of the infrastructure issues, such as delivery, storage, etc... as well as the business model that will be behind the acquirement of these textbooks. But many of the comments I've read here seemed to be really ignorant of the above paragraph which I think negates half of the concerns I've read about so far.
Last year, the state earmarked $350 million for school books and other instructional materials. Imagine the savings schools could realize by using these high-quality, free resources.
So reading further, and seeing the above statement sheds some more light on my first quote. It sounds like the state is expecting the submitted learning material to be "donated" for the cause of education. Meaning no publishers and no money involved in acquiring it. So all that's left is storage/delivery/viewing infrastructure. This is looking more promising now (just hinging on the availability of quality free educational content).
However, there are those who ardently defend the status quo, claiming our vision of providing learning materials to students for free would risk a high-quality education. ... That's nonsense. As the music and newspaper industries will attest, those who adapt quickly to changing consumer and business demands will thrive in our increasingly digital society and worldwide economy. Digital textbooks can help us achieve those goals and ensure that California's students continue to thrive in the global marketplace.
Again, more mention of FREE.
I don't live in California, but I recognize that the education system in the entire country is in shambles. I'm personally glad to see ideas like these being pushed around, and not only that but actually looking like they'll get implemented and not just talked about. While it's not mentioned explicitly, this sounds to me like it's talking about k-12 education. So all of you who only remember the university environment, please realize that k-12 is different. The textbooks were never yours to begin with. Hell, I'm from Florida and sometimes my school didn't have enough textbooks to give one to each student to take home. So yes, we only used them in class. Homework was improvised... photocopy, worksheets, etc...