Obama to Push Schools on Digital Textbooks

In his drive for greater usage of technology in the classroom, President Obama and his Administration have called for e-textbooks in every school.

While President Obama has called for greater technological literacy among young people in the country, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Education Secretary Arne Duncan recommended to industry and education officials that state legislation must change to allow K-12 schools to use taxpayer funding once reserved for printed books on iPads, Kindles and software.

It is thought that Obama’s goal is have an e-textbook in the hand of every student by 2017, writes Greg Toppo at USA Today.

Online resources are being promoted by the Administration as a way to help students learn more efficiently and give teachers real-time information on how well kids understand material.

Genachowski said:

“We spend $7 billion a year on textbooks, and for many students around the country, they’re out of date.”

In five years, he predicts, “we could be spending less as a society on textbooks and getting more for it.”

While tablet computers may be expensive, moving from paper to digital “saves a ton of money” in the long run.

“We absolutely want to push the process.”

The transition is essential, says Matt MacInnis, founder and CEO of the e-textbook company Inkling.

“There is no future for American education unless we figure this out. There’s no segment of any industry anywhere in the world anymore that doesn’t rely on technology to get its job done.”

The Core Knowledge Foundation promotes a “coherent, cumulative and content-specific core curriculum,” and Robert Pondiscio, a spokesman from the nonprofit organization, says that he’s dubious that just shifting material platforms would improve schools significantly.

“I wish there was even 10% as much thought as to what is going to come through these devices as in getting them into kids’ hands,” he says.

“It’s not a magic bullet. We need to worry about what is on these tablets while they’re sitting in kids’ laps.”

Karen Cator, the U.S. Department of Education’s technology director, believes that the move from paper to devices like tablets gives students the ability to do research, check their work and get feedback from teachers.

“One of the opportunities to extend the school day is by providing students with interactive and engaging environments outside of school,” she says.

Comments

Anonymous

February 11, 2012 at 10:57 am

When did Obama say this? Are kids responsible enough to handle these expensive devices? Will the first generation of new tech have to pay for the rest? This article is insufficient.

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- JT
  
  April 23, 2012 at 1:37 pm
  
  have you priced a textbook lately? They are around $115.
  
  Reply
jim miller

February 14, 2012 at 2:28 am

About time I say! The fact is that even though schools might not have adopted digital textbooks, both teachers and students have been sourcing them for their convenience, interactivity and flexibility. E-textbooks like CK12 FlexBooks in fact have been successfully used in school set ups , for example in Leadership Public Schools where their flexible platform allowed teachers to create literacy scaffoldings to help students of varied learning levels. This is just one example, but there’s whole country, South Korea , that has successfully and now almost fully transitioned to e-textbooks.
http://goo.gl/VXa3T

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Anonymous

March 9, 2012 at 11:20 am

This makes no sense at all for the younger children who are not responsible enough to handle that form of equipment. All families are not as furtunate to obtain these expensive equipments and besides are parents suppose to go into debt to get their children through grade school are high school??? Who ever thought this was a “good” idea was obviously on a “good” trip!!

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Anonymous

March 23, 2012 at 11:13 am

“Expensive?” In five years, you don’t think a company can produce a cheap and strong tablet to be used by kids only? The kindle/nook are $100-300. The cost would be less if the internal components only support downloading and viewing textbooks. “Expensive?” I doubt it!

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Pete

April 18, 2012 at 7:54 pm

I’m concerned less about the hardware costs than the software costs. Online textbooks are versatile, powerful, flexible media…the downside our school found was the cost. We used to buy paper textbooks that we paid for once and used until they were “worn out.” We bought subscriptions to an online text that was only good for 6 years. Now we are faced with the problem of trying to find tens of thousands of dollars to re-subscribe for just our department’s texts because the original subscription was $3 on top of each text book ($65/book). Now the textbook manufacturer realized they can’t make money just selling the online subscription so we would have to pay full price (now $72/subscription) to re-subscribe.

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Anonymous

June 12, 2012 at 10:49 am

Apple has most titles for around $15. We spen $80 a book for 4 books and we have to maintaing a class set and a “take home” set, that’s $720 per student. We usually replace 10-15% of these due to loss or damage. Do the math, this is the best way to go. We are considering, as a school district, to pay for the devices and absorb the up front cost. In the long run, we see the cost savings.

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