Wired Educator

Classroom textbooks are undergoing some notable changes, giving schools many new options and resources.Technology is rapidly changing the way textbooks are produced, sold, and used.

According to the Government Accountability Office, textbooks have outpaced inflation 2 to 1 in the last twenty years, and they make up 26 percent of tuition and fees at four-year colleges. A recent USA Today article cites the increasing use of “open textbooks” as a way to combat skyrocketing textbook prices for college students.  Open textbook are basically free texts that are available online.  Licenses are sold to schools and users are able to download any or all of the text. The texts can be read online or can be printed out.  Educators are also given the ability to customize the content for their classes. Some open textbooks agreements also allow for inexpensive print-on-demand, professionally bound copies at inexpensive prices.

Kindle, Amazon’s amazing ten ounce wireless reading device, is becoming a major player in the future of classroom texts as well.  Kindle already boasts an online reading library of over 130,000 books and a host of other electronic content.  Now it is being picked up by Princeton University, Yale, and the University of California for use this fall by giving students the option of buying hundreds of textbooks in a Kindle edition rather than hardback. The University of California already has 40 percent of its texts available for download.

Kindles cost $359, and the online editions are not much cheaper than the hardbacks.  Still, it is a major advancement in textbooks. Imagine having all of your texts available wherever you go and it weighs just ten ounces. The special “electronic paper” of the Kindle makes the text much easier to read. It has been reported, however, that diagrams and charts do not do as well on the Kindle.

This past school year I served on a curriculum textbook adoption committee and worked with four different textbook publishers.  I was surprised to learn how much content is now online and offered on CD.  Houghton Mifflin, Holt, Glencoe, Prentice Hall, many others now offer entire texts on CD for teachers and students to take home.  Additional resources are now being provided online to compliment the texts including power point, smart board lessons, video segments, and more.

Online textbooks were also available with these publishers. Students are able to log onto a web portal and access the entire text.  No more, “I forgot to take my book home.”  I was truly impressed with the integration of technology and textbooks during this recent adoption.

In the end, books will never go away.  They are loved and treasured by many.  I do enjoy my books and would prefer reading a hardback over any other form.  Books are durable and dependable.  They are extremely portable and can contain a huge amount of information.  Books will always be around, but it is nice to have a variety of options and additional resources for teachers.