Out here in California our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has started a Free Digital Textbook Initiative. The theory is that too much of our California budget is spent on the print version and this is certainly true. The results, thus far, are mixed.
Yes, an initial group of textbooks have been released. Some of the textbooks do a great job of meeting our state’s content standards and some are not particularly close. This is the issue. You can’t do free if free handicaps the students.
Clearly, I am looking at this because it has come up in my day job. It is certainly intriguing, but a little problematic as well. Out here we have the Williams Settlement which requires us to make sure all students have a textbook checked out specifically to them (because we didn’t always do a good job of that and now we need to deal with the fall-out). If you use digital textbooks, there are similar rules. You can either:
- provide the student with the electronic equipment necessary to view the digital version; or
- provide the student with a print-out of the digital version.
Anyone out there work for a school or a district that used digital textbooks, free or commercial, in a meaningful way? It would be helpful to see where others have gone.
Tags: digital textbooks, electronic books, free digital textbook initiative
