The media shift & the TX textbook revolution

Not everybody's idea of a national news story, but an example of the media sea change we're experiencing: "In a historic shift," Texas – the US's second-biggest textbook "customer" with a multi-billion-dollar textbook budget and highly centralized curriculum development and textbook purchasing that has been in place since 1918 – is broadening its definition of "book," the Texas Tribune reported recently. Part of the definition now seems to be "a living reservoir of content, freely edited and updated by educators and beamed to the classrooms, homes and handhelds of students statewide," and some of the budget will go to laptops and e-readers. Leading up to this development, the Tribune cites three fundamental shifts of power and money: "from the State Board of Education to the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency; from three major textbook conglomerates to a broad array of computer hardware and digital content providers; and from the state to school districts." The bottom line: School districts in Texas will actually be getting some of the state budget to make their own decisions on content, curriculum, and delivery tools, it appears. One of the top three textbook adoption states (the others being California and Florida) is acting like one-size-fits-all doesn't fit well with the way children learn, socialize, or use technology (see "Online Safety 3.0" for the Net-safety piece of that). For a bit more context: "Most states allow local school districts to buy their own instructional materials, in print or otherwise," according to the Tribune; but 22, the so-called adoption states, don't. Texas, Florida, and California together have more students than the other 19 combined, but "none has held the reigns of curriculum and money so tightly as Texas," the Tribune reports. As for book-content delivery devices – "e-readers" like Amazon's Kindle – sales are growing. According to The Economist, there are about 5 million out in the world right now, and "double that amount will be sold in 2010, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm. Apple, with its record of improving upon existing technologies and triggering mass adoption, is expected to shake up the business by launching a tablet-style computer which would make an ideal e-reader in 2010." The article's a little old, but some more great background on textbooks can be found at Edutopia.

'Look, Ma, no textbooks!'

Even as, for obvious budgetary reasons, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that digital textbooks are on the way and paper ones on the way out, a high school in Arizona proves it absolutely can be done. This year, Empire High School in Vail, Az., graduated its first class "to have started and completed their high school careers without the use of traditional textbooks," Tech&Learning reports (check out the great class photo!). Governor Schwarzenegger, whose plan is not without its critics, should sign a consulting contract with Empire's faculty and students! According to the Toronto Star's well-reported coverage, Schwarzenegger's plan is that as early as this fall, all high school math and science texts "will be entirely digital and, as the program rolls out, all textbooks on all subjects, K-12, will join them." Education reportedly accounts for about 40% of California's budget, and Schwarzenegger's talking about $2 million/year savings per 10,000-student district. "Come again, say critics," according to the Star. "Presuming teachers won't be just distributing print-outs and students will be given some sort of electronic device, aren't those savings wiped out?" Britain's Times Online says UK schools could well follow suit. [See also "Why participatory media need to be in school" and "School & social media: Uber big picture."]