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.'"
I agree with you in that it could potentially be a problem, but it wouldn't be hard to do right. Printing doesn't really cost that much. Spending $10 to print and spiralbind a textbook is a lot cheaper than paying $150 for a hardcover version. Need someone to print and do the binding? Hire students over the summer and on breaks and have them do the work.
Agreed - Printing is much cheaper than buying a hard bound version.
And, for those of you complaining about computers/Internet access, compare the cost of 1 semester's worth of books to the price of a cheap PC and a semester's worth of Internet access. You might be surprised. Heck, PC + Internet + printing/binding may still be significantly than my book costs some semesters - And you only have to buy the PC once (hopefully).
Agreed - Printing is much cheaper than buying a hard bound version.
The problem with this argument is that printouts are not likely to be used multiple years in a row. The cost of a hard bound book is distributed over a period of many years (sometimes as much as 15), whereas you'll be reprinting almost every year.
My take on it is this:
Average junior high books:
Language Arts
Science
Math
Social Studies
Maybe Foreign Language/Art/or Music
At $100 a book, that's $500 per student initial investment. Expected lifespan, say 7 years? So rounded up to ~$75 per student per year.
At $250 per netbook, that's half the initial investment. Expected lifespan, say 3-4 years? So rounded up to ~$75 per student per year.
So their is probably minimal cost savings.
Primary benefits: Increased technology in the classroom, constantly updated online textbook material, saved some trees
Drawbacks: Stolen/damaged netbooks, netbook lifespan may be optimistic, school network infrastructure will need upgrades also
Can anyone think of more pros/cons?
Given the trend toward technology in the workplace, I think it's a good idea. But I don't think it will save money.
Printouts are good for worksheets (which you throw away anyway), and books that you won't actually use, [... ] but not Math and Science
1) Does anyone refer to their 8th grade math textbook all that often?
2) Did anyone ever read their entire 8th grade math book even in the 8th grade? I recall consistently covering less than half the material in any given text book, when I went to school.
And honestly, is there any reason to replace most school textbooks if they haven't been ripped to shreds?
History - at least in my school, we almost never covered anything more current than world war II. I don't think what happened in the American Revolution has changed significantly in five years. And really current events should be using current journalism rather than a textbook anyway.
Math - Primary and secondary school math was pretty completely defined hundreds of years ago. All new textbooks add is different methods of teaching it, none of which have been proven to actually be better in a long-term sense.
Literature - Again, in school you're reading classics, not keeping up with the New York Times bestsellers. Heck, most literature books are just for convenience anyway - the vast majority of it is all public domain and available on Project Gutenberg or something similar. Similarly, most classes read the same novels every year or allow the students to go find a book on their own to read.
Science - There have been no scientific advances in the last twenty years that will actually be covered in secondary school. The old scientific literature, combined with a few periodicals for some of the "wow" factor of modern science, should be fine.
The only field where I can see an advantage to updating textbooks is in the computer science classes - and all computer science classes by definition already have a computer in them to access the vast quantity of web-available information.
I know this idea is anathema to the textbook industry, but seriously, what have they changed in the actual core textbooks aside from graphics and layout styles?
I'm all for adding new online worksheets or test generators or that sort of thing to make teachers lives easier, but that should have nothing to do with having to spend $100 on a new book.
It will only increase costs if people print the entire text book every year.
I can see some students occasionally printing some pages, but why on earth would anyone, let alone everyone, print the whole thing?
Kids these days are pretty much perfectly happy reading content online. Sure, you get the occasional freak who prefers paper books, but that's hardly the majority. Get an e-reader that allows markup, and you can even take notes directly in the "book". To say nothing of the increased search power in an electronic copy.
Yeap.. I was just going to post the same thing.. we as/. users are definitely on the tech side.. but lets remember not everyone has or can afford Internet access and the things to go with it (like a computer).
So really one must weight the cost of those dead-trees verses limited access mitigation like enhancing computer labs at schools, offering after-hours lab time, or even like you said, buying inexpensive netbooks for school (which you -know- will end up getting lost/damaged often so will need to be replaced.. plus who is gonna run the tech support for them when they get full of virii (or if they are linux, doing something like "rm -rf/")).
I'm very much for progress and technological evolution.... but we just got to realize there are still issues with doing it.
but lets remember not everyone has or can afford Internet access and the things to go with it (like a computer)
Not only that, but if you already have a computer at home you'll probably need a second one. After all, if your kid is tied to the computer for hours a day doing their homework, you no longer have a computer your kid does. So to save the government the cost of providing course materials to the kids, at least part of the cost is being passed off to the parents via the need for computer, internet connectivity etc. Also, teachers like to have kids read out of the book in class, does this mean that every class will need enough computers for everyone? Or are they going to supply the kids with Kindles or something?
It's not really a question of whether a specific group of children will benefit.
It's a question of, can we prevent any group of children from being hurt by the move, and is there a net benefit? Here the driver is cost - and don't get me wrong, I'll be the first to say that a rush to technology to save a buck can be a disaster.
That said, none of the issues people are raising are show-stoppers. We're talking about books, not dynamic content, so internet access need not be a requirement. ("But if you had the ineternet, think of all the cool value adds..." Yes, but right now we're just trying to save resources without putting extra burden on any children. Doing too much too fast is one of the easiest ways for this to go wrong.) School-provided hardware, done the right way, could save money over school-provided books. The computer doesn't have to be a general-purpose PC, so the tech support environment can be kept dirt simple.
Yes, they need to think this through and proceed carefully. Let's save the pointing and laughing until we see whether they do or not.
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
'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.
It's good to have a backup plan. It's bad to have a shitty backup plan. There are numerous ways you could maintain an electronic backup system without ever touching paper. So no, old ways aren't naturally fallback.
You though assume that the school is going to have control over these books. Likely that is not the case, you would go to a third-party website, login and then choose your book from there. It is likely that the school has no rights to copy/distribute them.
A school has big consumer power. I bet there are publishers that settle for such backup systems. After all it would strictly be for the sole purpose of maintaining studies for students. If you run into a publisher that has no interest in this then I see no reason why you'd have any interest in doing business with them, even if they wrote the best book about the subject there is. Fact is that book will, in five years time, be as shitty as the other outdated data in the world. Plus by expanding to internet you've already eliminated the dependency of books. Information can be fetched in numerous ways. If you're a publisher this is rather alarming and thus the power shifts to the favour of the consumer. Still these are only hypothetical scenarios but nonetheless I doubt it's that impossible as you describe it.
Large schools sure, but these large schools also usually have the infrastructure not to have internet interruptions, etc.
I bet there are publishers that settle for such backup systems. After all it would strictly be for the sole purpose of maintaining studies for students. If you run into a publisher that has no interest in this then I see no reason why you'd have any interest in doing business with them, even if they wrote the best book about the subject there is. Fact is that book will, in five years time, be as shitty as the other outdated data in the world.
You assume that there is no textbook monopoly, and that publishers actually care about the students. Honestly the textbook publishers are nothing more than the academic equivalent to the RIAA and MPAA. They just want to make a quick buck and if that means screwing taxpayers, they will do that, if that means screwing students, they have no problem with that, if that means planned obsolescence, they will do that too.
Plus by expanding to internet you've already eliminated the dependency of books. Information can be fetched in numerous ways. If you're a publisher this is rather alarming and thus the power shifts to the favour of the consumer.
You have to remember these are organizations with as much sense as the RIAA/MPAA, their response to competition is to raise prices, sue competitors for little to no reason, and decrease quality.
As someone with real experience of working in a school, please let me say this:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
No chance.
I'm not exactly clear what Schwarzenegger is trying to achieve here. Publishers will still charge per-copy, and probably not drastically less for the electronic copy versus the dead tree copy. Even if they do, you've got to budget to buy every child a kindle (or similar device) and budget to replace a certain number of these per year as they wear out or get damaged.
Unless the plan is to eliminate the concept of books altogether and use teaching material delivered over the school network - no, what about homework?
OK, deliver the teaching material online?
You think the publisher is going to charge significantly less for the material if it's delivered online? The cost of textbooks is high largely because they take a lot of time to write, you need a certain number of skills to get a complex subject across effectively and you don't have anything like the economies of scale seen in the latest John Grisham so if you need to pay the author $X, you have fewer customers to spread that $X between.
None of these things change with using a different distribution model.
OK, how about skip textbooks altogether and have the teachers put together their own material based on what they can find online? Good luck with that. You'd be doubling the average teachers' workload overnight. Not the way to win friends and influence people, particularly heavily unionised people.
You think the publisher is going to charge significantly less for the material if it's delivered online?
No, but not for the same reasons you seem to think.
The cost of textbooks is high largely because they take a lot of time to write, you need a certain number of skills to get a complex subject across effectively and you don't have anything like the economies of scale
Yet for grade school and even high school, we don't need totally rewritten textbooks every year. Or even every 10 years. None of the basics have changed that much. High school science may vall into that category if you have advanced topics classes. Current events classes probably don't need a textbook.
How come the 29th ed of a math book costs as much as the 28th ed? Surely you aren't suggesting that the cost is high because they took "a lot of time" to rewrite it? Why does the 29th ed still have the same wrong answers to problems in the back?
I believe that you are papering over the real reason: oligopic profit margins.
High quality CC texts are the future, and I find it funny that Arnie is still shoveling money to the distribution companies while attempting to be seen as forward thinking and somehow saving money through the magic of technology, when the problem at root is not technological.
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.
History, physics, chemistry, social science. These are some examples of subjects that, if I didn't update myself about since school, would today be outdated data. Perhaps not completely useless, but I never claimed such either.
We are talking high school here though. There is a lot of history that has not changed that can be taught in high school with a 5 or 10 year old textbook. Physics, same thing. High school physics should be the basics (optics, classical mechanics, etc.) not something that was discovered last year. Same with chemistry. Let the colleges and universities teach the advanced stuff since that's what they're for.
Talk to professors that teach first year courses. You'll find many of them will complain that students are coming into first year without an understanding of the basics in science and math or an ability to read critically and properly write an essay.
Its the same in CA. My point is that if they go to a digital curriculum that's one thing that might have to be centralized. The state might very well want to provide a library of online texts. They might offer some degree of choice to teachers and districts but setting up a full fledged digital document delivery and management system doesn't make sense to do at the district level.
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...
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?
Outdated textbooks are horrible. It's not the facts that are left behind it's the relevance to the current student. A math problem created in the 90s about some topic relevant to a student then will leave a student in the year 2020 wondering how useful math is really...
Question: "There are two cars traveling the same distance of 100 miles, one car gets 10 MPG the other gets 20 MPG. How many gallons of gas will each car need to arrive at their destination?"
Answer: "My car is electric and we just plug it in at night. It goes 300 miles on a charge."
Plus, the publishers will sell, not the books, but the licenses, which means re-purchase every two or three years, on the publishers' schedule and not the district's. No money? No books and no just getting by one more year with last year's texts.
I'd also worry about the costs of the reading appliances. Some will wear out. Some will be sold black market. Some will have soft drinks spilled on them. I hope the solution isn't that all reading is done strictly in the classroom.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 09, @08:47AM (#28264873)
This is exactly what happened in one of my classes. The professor thought it would be a good idea to switch to an on-line version of the text book, then some smart-ass started asking the sales rep from the publisher hard questions.
How much does it cost? $95 (the paper one was $100) Can I re-sell it at the end of the year? No Will I have access to the text after the class has ended? No
I didn't convince everyone, but about 10% of the other heads in the class were nodding as the publisher's castle of wishes and pretty clouds was blown away. Of course, the professor took me aside and said that I needed to "quit interrupting the class and undermining his authority."
The future is to build out and enhance projects like MITs Open Courseware. Grad students work on producing content, vetted by advisors, with a marginal delay for release, open to all. It has all the potential for breaking the status quo.
They're not expensive if you use them and amortized over quite a few years. I went to a Catholic elementary school. ALL of our books were hand-me-downs of Public school books and at least 2-3 editions old.
Unless I haven't been paying attention, Geometry, Calculus, WWII, the Roman Empire, Mitosis, etc hasn't changed much in the last few years. We were also required to have all books covered. They last quite a bit longer if you do this. I know that when I switched to a public school I had the EXACT same history book, it just happened to be 2 editions newer. Other than a few minor editorial changes, I didn't see anything different to my 7th grade mind.
The problem isn't that books are expensive, it's that they keep buying new ones when the old ones aren't obsolete. Moving online isn't going to help unless they use OSS textbooks. Book publishers are going to love this. Instead of buying a book every year for 120$ 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 information which today is so readily available in digital or electronic form is usually worth exactly what you pay for it. Schools need access to unbiased, objective information that isn't simply being paid for by commercial shills.
If California wasn't basically broke I might believe this hype (not really), but a better solution might be to set up a cost effective textbook publishing operation. Publishing is one of the areas where you are dependent on heavy fixed plant which has well defined operating costs. Therefore, competition can tend to raise prices because of the costs involved in marketing, sales, administration and (ahem) kickbacks, which are multiplied across every entrant. How about competitive tender to write textbooks, and competitive tender to print them? And, when the concept is proven, competitive tender to make them available on-line?
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.
... who find is very suspicious that a robot from the future that pretended to be our friend is now pushing through legislation to increase our dependence on machines and technology?
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.
I see this as a quick fix, but it's using some strong medicine.
Putting it into.pdf form (or whatever form they might fancy) will only inhibit the ability to think. You can't write down notes in the margins, even if you can highlight sections of text. This is analogous to freehand drawing vs computer aided drawing (creativity vs productivity). The single exception I can think of is taking pictures out of the.pdf's (if the DRM allows it).
By suddenly moving away from textbooks, we're moving further away from an old part of the brain, which has aided us in learning ever since humanity learned to tell stories from wall paintings. In general, computers can inhibit the brain processes that aid us in mental growth, mostly because it prevents the mind from subconsciously dwelling on a topic for extended periods. Computerized reading devices (Kindle-type products) would fare much better, but those require an investment that California may not be willing to buck up.
I'm not saying this can't work, but I am saying that it would work for people who have adapted to it (which most of the system there has not). What I'm also saying is that creativity within the 'new school' students will plummet. For people to adapt best to this change in learning mediums, they should start from a young age. You can expect old dogs to learn new tricks works, but does it work well enough?
Something I will stress though: there will be people who cotton to this new medium fairly well, and there will be those who won't. I personally would feel that (if I were a child again) I would end up in the camp who wouldn't, mostly because of the subculture that will show up around this policy change. (I went through textbooks very quickly as a child, it wouldn't be in my interests to be "stuck with" the rest of the class simply because of DRM issues)
There will be good aspects to this though: social life will figure out ways to conform to these electronic resources. Instant messaging is proof of this.
Say what you will about doodles being good, or doodles being bad, or even a philosophical debate over things like television and such; but not everything that technology's subcultures has brought us has been benign. While this new policy does sound benign to the regular person, it will affect people both positively and negatively. It needs to be respected as a dual-edged sword, instead of a stress-borne whim.
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!
She works in the Palm Springs school district and so far the results are mixed and expensive.
Basically the school dumps down $35,000 of tax payer money into laptops that the students try to steal which break when you drop them. The software is all internet based so that means no filtering. For some reason the I.T. department can't figure out how to firewall all addresses besides the 2 or 3 needed for the programs. She was told it had to do with some activeX controls. This means the kids log into myspace, facebook, and other inappropriate web sites when no one is looking. This includes a few sites where a chick in her class thought it was funny to show a pic of herself topless. My wife didn't report it because she could be fired on spot. She tried banning htem after I told her how to filter them with a hosts file. The kids just google for proxies to get around that. This is a problem because the lawyers feel the teacher is 100% responsible 100% of all the viewing on all 30 laptops.
Anyway as a math teacher the students really need to practice on paper and its hard to graph functions and slopes on a computer as the students do not understand the concept. What is good about them is that students can finish their work early and then be done and browse the net. With books they have to wait because they can distract other students if they do any other activities.
My wife kind of likes it because its less work for her. Computer grades everything wtih a submit button. In practice she has had the lkaptop key stolen once or twice and had to put her classroom on lockdown to get them back and the issue of inappropriate websites keep becoming an issue. Schools do not have a budget for a real competent staff who could configure their routers tighter than a virgin's ass with blocking search engines and non educational websites.
I'm participating in the CLRN Free Digital Textbook Initiative [clrn.org] as the author of a physics book [lightandmatter.com]. When this was discussed on slashdot recently [slashdot.org], I posted skeptically. The same day, I got an email from Brian Bridges, the director of CLRN, saying that he'd seen my slashdot post, and he wanted to reassure me that it really was going to happen. They'd already made a list of potential candidates who they wanted submissions from, and I was on it. I had to go through my books and figure out how they correlated with the list of topics (Word document) [clrn.org] that the state standards say are supposed to be covered in high school physics. Then there was a process where I had to set up an account on their server, fill out some online forms, and upload the Word file showing how my topics correlated with the standards.
There does seem to be somewhat of a fog of uncertainty surrounding this whole thing. One thing I've noticed is that although Schwarzenegger has named three top-level state education officials who are supposed to carry this out, some of these people are actually his political opponents. In case anyone hasn't noticed, this is all motivated by the hellish California state budget situation. This article [arstechnica.com] has some useful information about California's dysfunctional textbook selection system, and a previous, unsuccessful free-textbook effort called COSTP, where the state tried to produce a history textbook via wikibooks.org [wikibooks.org]. The present effort seems to be doing a pretty good job of eliminating the bureaucratic obstacles; Bridges sent me a detailed email explaining how to fill out all the forms, saying what it was safe to leave blank, etc.
One thing that I wasn't very clear on before was whether they envisioned this as something that would involve traditional textbook publishers, individual authors who'd put their own stuff on the web, or both. Although I'm sure they don't want to arbitrarily tell certain private entities, like the traditional publishers, that they can't participate, it seems clear to me now that it's aimed at the nontraditional folks like me. Note the word "free" in the name of the initiative [clrn.org]. No traditional publisher is going to give their book away for free in digital form. It's true that the big college and high school textbook publishers are very actively involved in an effort to distribute a lot of their books in digital form, but not for free. From what I've observed at the community college where I teach, the idea seems to be to get students to rent DRM'd textbooks. When the student stops paying the rent, they can no longer use the book. This would have the effect of eliminating the used book market, which the publishers hate with a passion. (That's the reason they bring out new editions so frequently.) So no, I don't think any traditional publishers will participate. The general picture really does seem to be that they're doing this as an alternative to the traditional publishers. Further circumstantial evidence comes from the fact that the state has already tried to do a collaboration with wikibooks. One big question in my mind is whether there will be a giant push-back from the traditional publishers to keep this from happening. Seems like a no-brainer if it really advances to the stage where their market is threatened.
A lot of the slashdot posts so far have been about the issue of how students will access the books. Since the initiative has "Free" in the name, I don't think we're going to see too many barriers to access here (rentals, DRM, logging in to a web site to access the book, etc.). Taking my own books as
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
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.
I agree that there are issues with viruses/breakage/hacking/objectionable material etc. But you hold the mistaken belief that the schools aren't already dealing with those issues. My district has something like a computer for every 2 kids (not all are kid accessible, but most are) and we deal with this stuff everyday. In fact, we're probably pretty good at it now, and our students have to sign computer use agreements and so we have policy around it and manage it. You also leave out the fact that if the computer is THEIRS... or will be theirs at the end of High School, they might take better care of it.
As to the cost of school materials, that is the central theme on this thread - everyone is looking at the publisher model here and those models are NOT compelling... the monopolistic publishers (There are like 3 of them, maybe 2 depending on how you cut it) don't want districts to move to online, and so they price their online additions such that it would be cheaper to keep buying the dead tree versions. They don't want to eat their own lunch, and while I don't blame them, I for one have had enough of it.
I'm advocating an approach similar to what California is doing - they are creating their OWN textbooks, free of the publishers. They get real educators, PhD's and everything, to write their ebooks. That is the model I am advocating. Think of it like Open Source for textbooks.
The arguments AGAINST such a model are the same arguments that Open Source faced at its beginning, and still face, to one degree or another, today. But at this point, you CAN run your computer completely on open source software if you want to, and with time, you'll be able to run your school system completely on open source textbooks. And instead of having to choose from 2 versions of your AP US History textbook that come from HM or PH, you'll be able to choose from who knows how many open source versions, all with the ability to tweak the textbook for your curriculum. I realize there will be a transitionary period, and that during that period you may end up having to do a mix of dead tree books and ebooks. But given a few more years, you will be able to basically give up the dead tree versions and the pay for play ebook versions, thus getting to a more flexible and sustainable textbook model.
1) US constitution which sets out the authorities of branches of the federal government 2) The California which sets out the authorities of branches of the federal government
A federal judge is governed by the US constitution but not the California constitution even when ruling in California (I'm oversimplifying a bit here). We were discussing this in terms of a bankruptcy of California which means a Federal judge would be ruling hence prop 13 is not binding on him/her.
Agree completely that ebooks (and readers) need to move beyond a static representation / recreation of a printed text (though in doing this they need to preserve niceties of fine book typography such as avoiding orphans and widows, preventing stacks, have decent justification algorithms (why isn't there an ebook reader program which uses TeX's algorithm) and use nice typefaces which are legible and readable).
Rather a shame Tim Berners Lee didn't use TeXview.app as inspiration for worldwideweb.app rather than TextEdit.app.
As a high school teacher, I can tell you the most common "notes" a student puts in the margins are "Roger kills Piggy," "Lennie kills George," and "Gatsby dies."
As someone who works for a textbook publisher, I can say without a doubt that this issue is not as simple as it seems. It seems like a good idea, a big cost-savings win for the state. But you also need to consider:
The longevity of a paper textbook. You can pass this down for at least a decade. A $100 textbook amortized out 10 years essentially becomes a $10 textbook.
You can't pass down electronic textbooks, unless the state has some really great dealbrokers. There's just NO WAY any of the publishers I know will allow this-- in fact, they're all drooling at the idea of e-books (while simultaneously dreading it-- go figure) because it eliminates the used book market.
Maybe CA negotiates a site-license kind of deal, so that they can redistribute books as they see fit. Also seems like it might work, but in our experience, this is still a huge profit center for the publishers-- look at journals like Nature. IIRC, Nature charges something like $10K annually for their electronic subscription. This is NOT cheaper than the paper copy! But it *is* more flexible, because you don't have to worry about where to store those paper copies, while simultaneously making them available to an entire campus, and that's the reason libraries do it. Not because it's cheaper.
If you can't get the rights to pass down books over the years, do you roll your own textbooks? California probably has enough talented people, and worldwide there are probably enough talented people to do this, but at the moment, there isn't a lot of high-quality free information out there. Wikipedia is wonderful, but it is not teaching-quality material. You have to PAY people to produce stuff like that, and it takes time. Having the state commission free works is a great idea, but the publishers will crank up their campaign contributions to stop it, I can assure you.
Who buys the e-readers for the students? If you expect everyone to have one, you need to expect the state to buy it. Is this REALLY cheaper? I'd like to see some real figures, because I am extremely doubtful.
My first impression from this is: Arnold is passing off a pro-industry decision as a pro-California one. I am skeptical.
[...] at the moment, there isn't a lot of high-quality free information out there. [...] You have to PAY people to produce stuff like that[...]
See my sig for hundreds of counterexamples.
[...] and it takes time.
But authors have already been doing this for years.
The project is only dealing with free textbooks, which means it is going to have zero participation from traditional textook publishers. (For confirmation that it's only about free books, see the project's web site, http://clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm [clrn.org], and the Schwarzenegger opinion piece linked to from the slashdot summary.)
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.
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.
OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
So are they gonna provide students a method of using these electronic resources, like a OLPC?
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not - teachers will merely go to these online aides and hit the "Print" button.
What can go wrong?
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed - Printing is much cheaper than buying a hard bound version.
And, for those of you complaining about computers/Internet access, compare the cost of 1 semester's worth of books to the price of a cheap PC and a semester's worth of Internet access. You might be surprised. Heck, PC + Internet + printing/binding may still be significantly than my book costs some semesters - And you only have to buy the PC once (hopefully).
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed - Printing is much cheaper than buying a hard bound version.
The problem with this argument is that printouts are not likely to be used multiple years in a row. The cost of a hard bound book is distributed over a period of many years (sometimes as much as 15), whereas you'll be reprinting almost every year.
My take on it is this:
Average junior high books:
Language Arts
Science
Math
Social Studies
Maybe Foreign Language/Art/or Music
At $100 a book, that's $500 per student initial investment. Expected lifespan, say 7 years? So rounded up to ~$75 per student per year.
At $250 per netbook, that's half the initial investment. Expected lifespan, say 3-4 years? So rounded up to ~$75 per student per year.
So their is probably minimal cost savings.
Primary benefits: Increased technology in the classroom, constantly updated online textbook material, saved some trees
Drawbacks: Stolen/damaged netbooks, netbook lifespan may be optimistic, school network infrastructure will need upgrades also
Can anyone think of more pros/cons?
Given the trend toward technology in the workplace, I think it's a good idea. But I don't think it will save money.
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Printouts are good for worksheets (which you throw away anyway), and books that you won't actually use, [ ... ] but not Math and Science
1) Does anyone refer to their 8th grade math textbook all that often?
2) Did anyone ever read their entire 8th grade math book even in the 8th grade? I recall consistently covering less than half the material in any given text book, when I went to school.
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
And honestly, is there any reason to replace most school textbooks if they haven't been ripped to shreds?
History - at least in my school, we almost never covered anything more current than world war II. I don't think what happened in the American Revolution has changed significantly in five years. And really current events should be using current journalism rather than a textbook anyway.
Math - Primary and secondary school math was pretty completely defined hundreds of years ago. All new textbooks add is different methods of teaching it, none of which have been proven to actually be better in a long-term sense.
Literature - Again, in school you're reading classics, not keeping up with the New York Times bestsellers. Heck, most literature books are just for convenience anyway - the vast majority of it is all public domain and available on Project Gutenberg or something similar. Similarly, most classes read the same novels every year or allow the students to go find a book on their own to read.
Science - There have been no scientific advances in the last twenty years that will actually be covered in secondary school. The old scientific literature, combined with a few periodicals for some of the "wow" factor of modern science, should be fine.
The only field where I can see an advantage to updating textbooks is in the computer science classes - and all computer science classes by definition already have a computer in them to access the vast quantity of web-available information.
I know this idea is anathema to the textbook industry, but seriously, what have they changed in the actual core textbooks aside from graphics and layout styles?
I'm all for adding new online worksheets or test generators or that sort of thing to make teachers lives easier, but that should have nothing to do with having to spend $100 on a new book.
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:4, Insightful)
It will only increase costs if people print the entire text book every year.
I can see some students occasionally printing some pages, but why on earth would anyone, let alone everyone, print the whole thing?
Kids these days are pretty much perfectly happy reading content online. Sure, you get the occasional freak who prefers paper books, but that's hardly the majority. Get an e-reader that allows markup, and you can even take notes directly in the "book". To say nothing of the increased search power in an electronic copy.
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeap.. I was just going to post the same thing.. we as /. users are definitely on the tech side.. but lets remember not everyone has or can afford Internet access and the things to go with it (like a computer).
So really one must weight the cost of those dead-trees verses limited access mitigation like enhancing computer labs at schools, offering after-hours lab time, or even like you said, buying inexpensive netbooks for school (which you -know- will end up getting lost/damaged often so will need to be replaced.. plus who is gonna run the tech support for them when they get full of virii (or if they are linux, doing something like "rm -rf /")).
I'm very much for progress and technological evolution.... but we just got to realize there are still issues with doing it.
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:4, Insightful)
but lets remember not everyone has or can afford Internet access and the things to go with it (like a computer)
Not only that, but if you already have a computer at home you'll probably need a second one. After all, if your kid is tied to the computer for hours a day doing their homework, you no longer have a computer your kid does. So to save the government the cost of providing course materials to the kids, at least part of the cost is being passed off to the parents via the need for computer, internet connectivity etc. Also, teachers like to have kids read out of the book in class, does this mean that every class will need enough computers for everyone? Or are they going to supply the kids with Kindles or something?
Parent
Re:OLPC? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not really a question of whether a specific group of children will benefit.
It's a question of, can we prevent any group of children from being hurt by the move, and is there a net benefit? Here the driver is cost - and don't get me wrong, I'll be the first to say that a rush to technology to save a buck can be a disaster.
That said, none of the issues people are raising are show-stoppers. We're talking about books, not dynamic content, so internet access need not be a requirement. ("But if you had the ineternet, think of all the cool value adds..." Yes, but right now we're just trying to save resources without putting extra burden on any children. Doing too much too fast is one of the easiest ways for this to go wrong.) School-provided hardware, done the right way, could save money over school-provided books. The computer doesn't have to be a general-purpose PC, so the tech support environment can be kept dirt simple.
Yes, they need to think this through and proceed carefully. Let's save the pointing and laughing until we see whether they do or not.
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Go Arnold! (Score:5, Insightful)
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
No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
'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.
Re:No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No its not... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
A school has big consumer power.
Large schools sure, but these large schools also usually have the infrastructure not to have internet interruptions, etc.
I bet there are publishers that settle for such backup systems. After all it would strictly be for the sole purpose of maintaining studies for students. If you run into a publisher that has no interest in this then I see no reason why you'd have any interest in doing business with them, even if they wrote the best book about the subject there is. Fact is that book will, in five years time, be as shitty as the other outdated data in the world.
You assume that there is no textbook monopoly, and that publishers actually care about the students. Honestly the textbook publishers are nothing more than the academic equivalent to the RIAA and MPAA. They just want to make a quick buck and if that means screwing taxpayers, they will do that, if that means screwing students, they have no problem with that, if that means planned obsolescence, they will do that too.
Plus by expanding to internet you've already eliminated the dependency of books. Information can be fetched in numerous ways. If you're a publisher this is rather alarming and thus the power shifts to the favour of the consumer.
You have to remember these are organizations with as much sense as the RIAA/MPAA, their response to competition is to raise prices, sue competitors for little to no reason, and decrease quality.
Parent
Re:No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone with real experience of working in a school, please let me say this:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
No chance.
I'm not exactly clear what Schwarzenegger is trying to achieve here. Publishers will still charge per-copy, and probably not drastically less for the electronic copy versus the dead tree copy. Even if they do, you've got to budget to buy every child a kindle (or similar device) and budget to replace a certain number of these per year as they wear out or get damaged.
Unless the plan is to eliminate the concept of books altogether and use teaching material delivered over the school network - no, what about homework?
OK, deliver the teaching material online?
You think the publisher is going to charge significantly less for the material if it's delivered online? The cost of textbooks is high largely because they take a lot of time to write, you need a certain number of skills to get a complex subject across effectively and you don't have anything like the economies of scale seen in the latest John Grisham so if you need to pay the author $X, you have fewer customers to spread that $X between.
None of these things change with using a different distribution model.
OK, how about skip textbooks altogether and have the teachers put together their own material based on what they can find online? Good luck with that. You'd be doubling the average teachers' workload overnight. Not the way to win friends and influence people, particularly heavily unionised people.
Parent
Re:No its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the publisher is going to charge significantly less for the material if it's delivered online?
No, but not for the same reasons you seem to think.
The cost of textbooks is high largely because they take a lot of time to write, you need a certain number of skills to get a complex subject across effectively and you don't have anything like the economies of scale
Yet for grade school and even high school, we don't need totally rewritten textbooks every year. Or even every 10 years. None of the basics have changed that much. High school science may vall into that category if you have advanced topics classes. Current events classes probably don't need a textbook.
How come the 29th ed of a math book costs as much as the 28th ed? Surely you aren't suggesting that the cost is high because they took "a lot of time" to rewrite it? Why does the 29th ed still have the same wrong answers to problems in the back?
I believe that you are papering over the real reason: oligopic profit margins.
High quality CC texts are the future, and I find it funny that Arnie is still shoveling money to the distribution companies while attempting to be seen as forward thinking and somehow saving money through the magic of technology, when the problem at root is not technological.
Regards.
Parent
Outdated? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Outdated? (Score:4, Informative)
History, physics, chemistry, social science. These are some examples of subjects that, if I didn't update myself about since school, would today be outdated data. Perhaps not completely useless, but I never claimed such either.
We are talking high school here though. There is a lot of history that has not changed that can be taught in high school with a 5 or 10 year old textbook. Physics, same thing. High school physics should be the basics (optics, classical mechanics, etc.) not something that was discovered last year. Same with chemistry. Let the colleges and universities teach the advanced stuff since that's what they're for.
Talk to professors that teach first year courses. You'll find many of them will complain that students are coming into first year without an understanding of the basics in science and math or an ability to read critically and properly write an essay.
Parent
Re:No its not... (Score:4, Insightful)
Its the same in CA. My point is that if they go to a digital curriculum that's one thing that might have to be centralized. The state might very well want to provide a library of online texts. They might offer some degree of choice to teachers and districts but setting up a full fledged digital document delivery and management system doesn't make sense to do at the district level.
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Bait and Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Interesting)
Outdated textbooks are horrible. It's not the facts that are left behind it's the relevance to the current student. A math problem created in the 90s about some topic relevant to a student then will leave a student in the year 2020 wondering how useful math is really...
Question:
"There are two cars traveling the same distance of 100 miles, one car gets 10 MPG the other gets 20 MPG. How many gallons of gas will each car need to arrive at their destination?"
Answer:
"My car is electric and we just plug it in at night. It goes 300 miles on a charge."
Parent
Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the problem sets out of the textbook and put them in a cheap disposable plain paper packet where they belong.
Math concepts are timeless and belong in a textbook! Problems are cheap and do need frequent updating. Publish them separate. Problem solved!
Parent
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, the publishers will sell, not the books, but the licenses, which means re-purchase every two or three years, on the publishers' schedule and not the district's. No money? No books and no just getting by one more year with last year's texts.
I'd also worry about the costs of the reading appliances. Some will wear out. Some will be sold black market. Some will have soft drinks spilled on them. I hope the solution isn't that all reading is done strictly in the classroom.
Parent
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly what happened in one of my classes. The professor thought it would be a good idea to switch to an on-line version of the text book, then some smart-ass started asking the sales rep from the publisher hard questions.
How much does it cost? $95 (the paper one was $100)
Can I re-sell it at the end of the year? No
Will I have access to the text after the class has ended? No
I didn't convince everyone, but about 10% of the other heads in the class were nodding as the publisher's castle of wishes and pretty clouds was blown away. Of course, the professor took me aside and said that I needed to "quit interrupting the class and undermining his authority."
Parent
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Buy once - use many. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not expensive if you use them and amortized over quite a few years. I went to a Catholic elementary school. ALL of our books were hand-me-downs of Public school books and at least 2-3 editions old.
Unless I haven't been paying attention, Geometry, Calculus, WWII, the Roman Empire, Mitosis, etc hasn't changed much in the last few years. We were also required to have all books covered. They last quite a bit longer if you do this. I know that when I switched to a public school I had the EXACT same history book, it just happened to be 2 editions newer. Other than a few minor editorial changes, I didn't see anything different to my 7th grade mind.
The problem isn't that books are expensive, it's that they keep buying new ones when the old ones aren't obsolete. Moving online isn't going to help unless they use OSS textbooks. Book publishers are going to love this. Instead of buying a book every year for 120$ 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".
Unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)
If California wasn't basically broke I might believe this hype (not really), but a better solution might be to set up a cost effective textbook publishing operation. Publishing is one of the areas where you are dependent on heavy fixed plant which has well defined operating costs. Therefore, competition can tend to raise prices because of the costs involved in marketing, sales, administration and (ahem) kickbacks, which are multiplied across every entrant. How about competitive tender to write textbooks, and competitive tender to print them? And, when the concept is proven, competitive tender to make them available on-line?
Re:Unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Am I the only one ... (Score:5, Funny)
... who find is very suspicious that a robot from the future that pretended to be our friend is now pushing through legislation to increase our dependence on machines and technology?
It's a trap!
Online Textbooks Just Aren't ready (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dual-edged sword (Score:4, Interesting)
I see this as a quick fix, but it's using some strong medicine.
Putting it into .pdf form (or whatever form they might fancy) will only inhibit the ability to think. You can't write down notes in the margins, even if you can highlight sections of text. This is analogous to freehand drawing vs computer aided drawing (creativity vs productivity). The single exception I can think of is taking pictures out of the .pdf's (if the DRM allows it).
By suddenly moving away from textbooks, we're moving further away from an old part of the brain, which has aided us in learning ever since humanity learned to tell stories from wall paintings. In general, computers can inhibit the brain processes that aid us in mental growth, mostly because it prevents the mind from subconsciously dwelling on a topic for extended periods. Computerized reading devices (Kindle-type products) would fare much better, but those require an investment that California may not be willing to buck up.
I'm not saying this can't work, but I am saying that it would work for people who have adapted to it (which most of the system there has not). What I'm also saying is that creativity within the 'new school' students will plummet. For people to adapt best to this change in learning mediums, they should start from a young age. You can expect old dogs to learn new tricks works, but does it work well enough?
Something I will stress though: there will be people who cotton to this new medium fairly well, and there will be those who won't. I personally would feel that (if I were a child again) I would end up in the camp who wouldn't, mostly because of the subculture that will show up around this policy change. (I went through textbooks very quickly as a child, it wouldn't be in my interests to be "stuck with" the rest of the class simply because of DRM issues)
There will be good aspects to this though: social life will figure out ways to conform to these electronic resources. Instant messaging is proof of this.
Say what you will about doodles being good, or doodles being bad, or even a philosophical debate over things like television and such; but not everything that technology's subcultures has brought us has been benign. While this new policy does sound benign to the regular person, it will affect people both positively and negatively. It needs to be respected as a dual-edged sword, instead of a stress-borne whim.
Technology isn't always the answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Worst idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Wifes school already did this (Score:4, Informative)
She works in the Palm Springs school district and so far the results are mixed and expensive.
Basically the school dumps down $35,000 of tax payer money into laptops that the students try to steal which break when you drop them. The software is all internet based so that means no filtering. For some reason the I.T. department can't figure out how to firewall all addresses besides the 2 or 3 needed for the programs. She was told it had to do with some activeX controls. This means the kids log into myspace, facebook, and other inappropriate web sites when no one is looking. This includes a few sites where a chick in her class thought it was funny to show a pic of herself topless. My wife didn't report it because she could be fired on spot. She tried banning htem after I told her how to filter them with a hosts file. The kids just google for proxies to get around that. This is a problem because the lawyers feel the teacher is 100% responsible 100% of all the viewing on all 30 laptops.
Anyway as a math teacher the students really need to practice on paper and its hard to graph functions and slopes on a computer as the students do not understand the concept. What is good about them is that students can finish their work early and then be done and browse the net. With books they have to wait because they can distract other students if they do any other activities.
My wife kind of likes it because its less work for her. Computer grades everything wtih a submit button. In practice she has had the lkaptop key stolen once or twice and had to put her classroom on lockdown to get them back and the issue of inappropriate websites keep becoming an issue. Schools do not have a budget for a real competent staff who could configure their routers tighter than a virgin's ass with blocking search engines and non educational websites.
I'm participating in this as an author. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm participating in the CLRN Free Digital Textbook Initiative [clrn.org] as the author of a physics book [lightandmatter.com]. When this was discussed on slashdot recently [slashdot.org], I posted skeptically. The same day, I got an email from Brian Bridges, the director of CLRN, saying that he'd seen my slashdot post, and he wanted to reassure me that it really was going to happen. They'd already made a list of potential candidates who they wanted submissions from, and I was on it. I had to go through my books and figure out how they correlated with the list of topics (Word document) [clrn.org] that the state standards say are supposed to be covered in high school physics. Then there was a process where I had to set up an account on their server, fill out some online forms, and upload the Word file showing how my topics correlated with the standards.
There does seem to be somewhat of a fog of uncertainty surrounding this whole thing. One thing I've noticed is that although Schwarzenegger has named three top-level state education officials who are supposed to carry this out, some of these people are actually his political opponents. In case anyone hasn't noticed, this is all motivated by the hellish California state budget situation. This article [arstechnica.com] has some useful information about California's dysfunctional textbook selection system, and a previous, unsuccessful free-textbook effort called COSTP, where the state tried to produce a history textbook via wikibooks.org [wikibooks.org]. The present effort seems to be doing a pretty good job of eliminating the bureaucratic obstacles; Bridges sent me a detailed email explaining how to fill out all the forms, saying what it was safe to leave blank, etc.
One thing that I wasn't very clear on before was whether they envisioned this as something that would involve traditional textbook publishers, individual authors who'd put their own stuff on the web, or both. Although I'm sure they don't want to arbitrarily tell certain private entities, like the traditional publishers, that they can't participate, it seems clear to me now that it's aimed at the nontraditional folks like me. Note the word "free" in the name of the initiative [clrn.org]. No traditional publisher is going to give their book away for free in digital form. It's true that the big college and high school textbook publishers are very actively involved in an effort to distribute a lot of their books in digital form, but not for free. From what I've observed at the community college where I teach, the idea seems to be to get students to rent DRM'd textbooks. When the student stops paying the rent, they can no longer use the book. This would have the effect of eliminating the used book market, which the publishers hate with a passion. (That's the reason they bring out new editions so frequently.) So no, I don't think any traditional publishers will participate. The general picture really does seem to be that they're doing this as an alternative to the traditional publishers. Further circumstantial evidence comes from the fact that the state has already tried to do a collaboration with wikibooks. One big question in my mind is whether there will be a giant push-back from the traditional publishers to keep this from happening. Seems like a no-brainer if it really advances to the stage where their market is threatened.
A lot of the slashdot posts so far have been about the issue of how students will access the books. Since the initiative has "Free" in the name, I don't think we're going to see too many barriers to access here (rentals, DRM, logging in to a web site to access the book, etc.). Taking my own books as
Re:OLPC (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Parent
Re:OLPC (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:OLPC (Score:4, Informative)
As to the cost of school materials, that is the central theme on this thread - everyone is looking at the publisher model here and those models are NOT compelling... the monopolistic publishers (There are like 3 of them, maybe 2 depending on how you cut it) don't want districts to move to online, and so they price their online additions such that it would be cheaper to keep buying the dead tree versions. They don't want to eat their own lunch, and while I don't blame them, I for one have had enough of it.
I'm advocating an approach similar to what California is doing - they are creating their OWN textbooks, free of the publishers. They get real educators, PhD's and everything, to write their ebooks. That is the model I am advocating. Think of it like Open Source for textbooks.
The arguments AGAINST such a model are the same arguments that Open Source faced at its beginning, and still face, to one degree or another, today. But at this point, you CAN run your computer completely on open source software if you want to, and with time, you'll be able to run your school system completely on open source textbooks. And instead of having to choose from 2 versions of your AP US History textbook that come from HM or PH, you'll be able to choose from who knows how many open source versions, all with the ability to tweak the textbook for your curriculum. I realize there will be a transitionary period, and that during that period you may end up having to do a mix of dead tree books and ebooks. But given a few more years, you will be able to basically give up the dead tree versions and the pay for play ebook versions, thus getting to a more flexible and sustainable textbook model.
Parent
Re:ha (Score:4, Interesting)
No you are confusing two documents:
1) US constitution which sets out the authorities of branches of the federal government
2) The California which sets out the authorities of branches of the federal government
A federal judge is governed by the US constitution but not the California constitution even when ruling in California (I'm oversimplifying a bit here). We were discussing this in terms of a bankruptcy of California which means a Federal judge would be ruling hence prop 13 is not binding on him/her.
Parent
Re:On-line content needs to be leveraged according (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like this?
http://www.mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html [clarku.edu]
Agree completely that ebooks (and readers) need to move beyond a static representation / recreation of a printed text (though in doing this they need to preserve niceties of fine book typography such as avoiding orphans and widows, preventing stacks, have decent justification algorithms (why isn't there an ebook reader program which uses TeX's algorithm) and use nice typefaces which are legible and readable).
Rather a shame Tim Berners Lee didn't use TeXview.app as inspiration for worldwideweb.app rather than TextEdit.app.
William
Parent
Re:That's supposed to be a good idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a high school teacher, I can tell you the most common "notes" a student puts in the margins are "Roger kills Piggy," "Lennie kills George," and "Gatsby dies."
Parent
I am skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
My first impression from this is: Arnold is passing off a pro-industry decision as a pro-California one. I am skeptical.
Parent
Re:I am skeptical (Score:4, Informative)
See my sig for hundreds of counterexamples.
But authors have already been doing this for years.
The project is only dealing with free textbooks, which means it is going to have zero participation from traditional textook publishers. (For confirmation that it's only about free books, see the project's web site, http://clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm [clrn.org], and the Schwarzenegger opinion piece linked to from the slashdot summary.)
Parent
Re:online lectures, not books (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Textbooks (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent