eBook News

I don't usually feel that savings should be the end all reason for changing how a school runs, but I do understand the pressure. I'm sure that we have all experienced situations where, at some point in our lives, we had to cut back on expenses to be successful (read not-fail).  I'm sure that everyone has also had experience with the spend money to save money aspect also, such as when you buy a more efficient air conditioner or water heater that ends up saving enough to pay for itself after a few years. For many though, textbooks are sacrosanct elements of schools, after all textbooks in their current form have existed for centuries, and moving to a new format is a major paradigm shift for many.  But, this shift seems to be a must change, as the world moves deeper into the information age, then to should the experiences be more authentic to the way that people will access information (beyond just school). Think about your own behaviors recently, when you needed to look somet...

I think that schools will (at least for the most part) be going digital with their textbooks, if only for the costs. A big meeting was held about digital textbooks into U.S. classrooms by the FCC and the Department of Education, included everyone from Apple to Intel to McGraw-Hill was in attendance.  Their finding were that doing so could save about $60 per student per year - something that could be a nice summative savings. I equate this to how Pres. J. Carter "found" so much oil, by having us use less such as by increased gas mileage.  I know that 60$ doesn't sound like much, although trying to get a 60$/student increase today would seem impossible, but remember how many students that there are and then start adding the years. In my district if we could that would mean: 60 $/student 200,000 students in my school district =12,000,000 $saving/year At a school were the state just told us we had to cut 6 million dollars, a 12 million savings in a year, would be...