First text books by school text-book publishers are now going digital only. This follows years of a demographic downward slope in student numbers, coupled with two years of cuts [in Ontario] in text-book funding. US sales of K-12 textbooks dropped 16.9% in 2011, year over year.
In this environment McGraw-Hill launched its first all-digital, cloud-based textbook, for the K-12 market this past week. Pearson, who produce texts used in Ontario also announced an upcoming digital product for K-8 in reading and math.
With this direction two issues come into discussion: First the need to provide appropriate technology to students, at a time when the Ministry of Education has cut this funding. This is particularly key in the K-12 area where there is less “tech” per student than at the post-secondary level.
Grade schools and high schools have been slower to adopt digital textbooks than universities, at least partly because K-12 textbooks are traditionally provided by schools — many of which lack hardware to make sure that all of their students can access them. ” Publishers Launch First Digita-only Text Book – full story- Mashable”
Secondly, we need to analyze the merits of moving away for hard-copy texts. Do we want to walk away from tactile, page flipping texts. Does transforming to a digital book format change something key that is needed by some students as a key component to their learning style? Is this just a generational issue or is their merit in physical texts as a learning tool?
Lots of questions – sorry no answers.
