So you must add the price for using the intellectual property of the publishers and authors to the price of the tablet. Nobody writes and publishes text books for free. Somebody has to be paid for creating that drivel.

That rant aside, I see some advantages to the use of tablets- kids will have lighter loads to lug around in back backs. That will be balanced against using dubious on-line content as references for their "papers".

Like any change there are good, bad and indifferent reasons to go forward, and the same goes for what is presently in place. I went to a Catholic H.S. where books had to be bought- and the same in university. I kept many of those books for years - and used them on occasion.

2 things trouble me about e-media
1. It is ephemeral.
2. This one is personal; I often choose books because of their physical presences. The design of the cover the, the blocking of the title and the feel of the actual book in my hands. I may download books I've read and loved but how do I get drawn into new books by new authors. I am talking about novels and not non-fiction. Novels are my most favorite forms of entertainment.

That always seemed like an odd prejudice to me. There are plenty of bogus sources everywhere.

I love their smell...I love the notes that I may have written in the margins...I love knowing which ones were given to me by loved ones...I love looking at them in the bookshelves that my Uncle John made for me.

keep your tablets thank you...

I think we have to realize that test books are an ideal candidate for tablets. The books can be updated frequently, the pages don't get ripped for scrubbed on, you don't have pages sneezed on, or with dried snot smeared on them ( at least I HOPE that was snot). And when my 11 year daughter has to carry over 15 pounds of text books back and for to school every day, I'm MUCH happier when she can just carry an iPad instead (they started that transition this year). Not to mention, she has become tech savvy very quickly!

The Boy's HS runs 2 Chemistry classes. 30-35 kids per class, 7 periods in a school day. that would be about 450 Chemistry books.

School claims the books run $139 each they replace them every 10 years or so. But each summer they send the books off to be rebind, at a cost of $15 each book (part of school fees)

($139 * 450) /10 = $6,255 per year for Chemistry books

$15 * 450 = $6,750 for 1 year of maintenance on the books

So each year the school spends $13,005 on just Chemistry books

We pay $15 per book per class each year for the rebinding, the boy has 7 classes so $105 of his school fees are just for rebinding, $105 would buy a NOOK COLOR with money left over. Plus one unit should last for all 4 years, so either the parents save more or the schools have more money to work with

One would think Schools could buy site license's for books, currently the school pays the book publisher an average of 6,255 a year for Chemistry books. One would think a deal could be worked out for $5000 a year for a site license. It would save the book publisher the expense of having to make a real book with a 1000 pages and it would give them a yearly income stream instead of a bulk payment every 10 years

Books could then be updated on the fly for errors or new discoveries, plus the schools would save a lot of money. $5,000 for a year's lease on books plus the "maintenance" would be drop to $1,527 per year instead of $6,750

"maintenance"
Was $15 per book per year ($15 * 450 * 1 = $6,750)
Will be $95 per kid every 4 years for all seven classes) (($95 for a Nook * 450 students) / 4 years) / 7 classes = $1,527

Total savings by someone would be $4,728 per class per year. With 7 classes a year that would be a savings of $33,096 for every 450 kids

$33,096 could buy a new teacher

They don't much respect teachers here.

Insurance companies only pass on costs anyway, with an added percentage of profit for the company.

For the insurance. What's not covered by insurance the kids' parents pay.

In case of penury the school has a fund to cover insurance but requires something like community service to offset the insurance premium.

In case the parents refuses to allow the kids to have a tablet there has to be an alternative means of content delivery. Lots of photocopies and some hard-copy books.

I wish we had this option in the 80's. My back would probably be much better. Carrying all those books was really not a good idea. I am not saying this is the only reason, but it does make me think that their is a ton of back pain going around that seems more than my Grandparents generation.

And you've never carried a tablet all day with a 5-lb extended battery, plus charger, have you?

You got me. Talking out my ass again. Roll head in shame.

nt

when they lose or damage them.

If I were making the decisions for an insurance company it wouldn't write a policy with premiums less then 25% of the total value of all the tablets.

Textbooks (in theory) last several years without maintenance, a tablet will likely be either obsolete or too damaged to be usable after a couple of years.

Thats not even counting the high initial cost differential.

I had a high school history textbook in 1991 that talked about the possibility of putting a man on the moon in the coming decade.

The US history textbook I used in high school was brand new-- it even had information about the election that had been concluded just a few months before.

Now my Arkansas history book, on the other hand, was woefully outdated. I don't think it even covered the Little Rock Central High crisis, which was a bit before my time. Even so, there was something mystical about that book, about the pictures, the way it was arranged, even the scent, that made me want to read it-- something that is lacking in tablets.

That's usually stupid from the school's POV, since textbooks have to last for years and then are quickly outdated.

Publishers like this, though, because if their books are quickly outdated they get replaced more often.

oopsie the shady Supt. paid his FRIENDS to develop content. Oops they didn't. Oops no reliable wifi in the school buildings. They're gathering dust now.

If your district attempts this pay attention.

It relieves weight on the student's backpack, but it hinders those who don't have tablets. Used, but up-to-date textbooks are the answer in my opinion.

... So far it s working out well. They also come with a pretty sturdy case, and they seem pretty durable. This is one area where technology can really improve the learning experience. Hyperlinked texts are fantastic when you're trying to learn something, for get that formula, tap on the problem, and formula pops up. Don't know what that social studies term means? Tap on it to get the definition. Physical books are awesome. But this is an ideal application for tablet technology.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the way things are going.

I support keeping kids current with technology, because that's where jobs are going to be in the 21st century. The kids entering High school this fall, many if not most of them were born after New Years 2000.

I realize that given where a big chunk of DU sits, demographically, this may come as.... ah...... extremely upsetting news.


I'm not going to go all Ned Ludd on this idea. I think it makes sense, and anyway, it's inevitable. If not cost effective now, it will be.

into getting her a color e-ink e-reader for graduation. May not be snappy, but will be great for textbooks, magazines, etc. well into the future.

I see immediately some of the logic.

Plus you see as those backpacks get heavier and heavier every year.

I have an Asus MeMo Pad 7" that I got for $130 at Office Depot on sale, and I can read all of my online course content, use my university's app for coursework, and I can even type on a small bluetooth keyboard if I really need to. With Evernote for notes and Google Drive, I have pretty much everything I need, and it fits in my purse.

I'm looking for an e-reader with e-ink, not an LCD screen.

I love mine. That was my first tablet-ish thing, and I got it because it's so easy to read and doesn't hurt my eyes, even after hours of reading. Better with the Touch is that you can do audio files, too. I had a Paperwhite (and liked it until a student stole it), but I kept going back to my Touch instead.

Yes, I'm weird in that I have both a tablet and a Kindle. I read on the Kindle, though not my stuff for school because it doesn't like the Kindle and won't load right no matter what I try, and I use my tablet for everything else. Or my laptop.

It gives them a lot more capability than just replacing textbooks. They can issue homework and tests on the tablet as well and move everything electronically. I can see all sorts of cost savings and increased capabilities. There's a lot of labor involved in moving paper around.

standard materials, it has been disastrous.

A Book to read: The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way.

NPR - Radio West with Doug Fabrizio - February 21st has a very powerful show on the subject.

and see that the 2 of the 3 people who gave it only 1 star were pissed off because the kindle edition was more expensive than the paperback.
lol.

hardly even ironic. Just dumb funny.

Try to do science and math problems using a tablet. My older daughter had an online textbook for her Mechanics of Materials class last semester. After struggling going back and forth between the examples and the problem set, I paid to have the textbook printed in black and white - best money I ever spent. My younger daughter has her high school Chemistry textbook online. I tried to get the entire thing printed, but it is still being revised (this after my daughter could not get to it when their server was down). The high school issued Chromebooks to my girls this year. I am fortunate that my sophomore daughter only has one year of Spanish and a semester of social science left at the high school. Those two subjects, along with English, probably are ok with a tablet.

Scientific American had a good article on this issue.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

There's no reason the examples shouldn't be linked from the problem set. My 11 year old daughter's algebra book is hyperlinked like that. This is a technology we need to learn to use, but when we do, it'll blow old-style text books away.

You can easily look four or five different examples when doing a problem along with many possible equations or procedures that can apply. In addition you don't want to wire the problem sets to a particular example. Knowing which examples to use is a big part of understanding how to do the problem and mastering the concept. I have yet to see that effectively done in a sophomore or higher level engineering textbook. In fairness I have not looked at many. Probably the simplest thing to do is have a the problems as a packet that can be printed out (I often end up doing this anyway even with a textbook). My daughters are pretty attuned to technology, and they still feel relieved when presented with a physical textbook in an engineering, math, or computationally intensive science.

The textbooks need to be designed first before wide implementation of the tablets, and these textbooks need to go through a review process including with students.

Also the technology should be color e-ink and not a backlit display (see SA article). I love my Kindle e-ink for reading novels. It is just the right size and weight (like holding a paperback book). I am not sold on any tablet expect maybe the now defunct Kindle DX for reading a technical paper. Of course this is just a conversion from pdf. How do people with IPADs and larger Kindle Fires feel about reading technical magazines and books?

I use a retina display iPad for reading journals all the time. It's fine. However, my old iPad 2 was not acceptable for that use.

I think e-ink is porbably a bit easier on the eyes, but it find the retina display is fine.

Do you know of any good mechanical engineering e textbooks? I am open to being converted. My daughter will be at Iowa State next year in mechanical engineering, and I would like to consider any alternatives that will make her learning experience better.

Sorry if I came off as rather curt. Well, I did all my undergrad work back in the late 80's, so no advice on e-textbooks for those subjects, I'm afraid, my opinion e-textbooks is based on my daughter excellent algebra book (which she accesses using an iPad 4), and a social studies book she has... Both very well hyperlinked. I suspect college texts are further behind, because it will be a less profitable venture. But it IS coming. Your daughter has both the fortune to witness a remarkable paradigm shift, and the misfortune in having to deal with it! Right now, many college texts are just straight conversions of physical books. Those, I would agree, are inferior to convenience of a physical book. The e-books will only begin to shine when publishers actually hire designers who will be able to actually take advantage of the media. Right now the technology is kind of where DVD's were when they first came out before people learned how to really produce for an interactive medium.

Anyways, this old man is going back to school to get a Master this fall, so if I find some good examples, I'll keep your name and PM you with them.

and thanks for the information.

then carried over to being ebooks.

That Mechanics book needs links added. A link from the problem to the right place in the text; an automatic bookmark, so you can click and easily go back to the last place linked from.

Then again, our textbook allowed linking from problem to the right place in the text. And almost no student tried to remember how to do the problem or what the answer was. They clicked, copied, pasted; or they clicked, short-term memoried the information just long enough to answer the question or parrotted the sample problem. Then when they got to problems that required thinking, they hadn't learned what they needed. They had self-scaffolded themselves to dizzying levels, and when they had to work without a net they had neither scaffold nor skills to rely on.

There are still fundamental problems with ebooks. For example, a lot of good readers, esp. in highly dense texts, don't read linearly. They don't start with the upper left page and read straight through. They refer back and forth to the text. As they turn a page, they often flip back to the previous page a few times, and occasionally back two or three pages. They clarify a point, refresh their memory, check on an implication or inference. On occasion they look ahead, to see where the argument's going and make sure they're not distracted by their own inferences. It's really hard to do that with etexts because you lose your visual bearings--with a lot of training it may change, but we're nowhere near there yet. The kids don't flip back when they need to, and they sort of drift. The text becomes less meaningful as they read, but they keep passing their eyes over symbols and less and less means anything.

Science and math texts are denser than a lot of humanities texts.

A more subtle problem is that kids are conditioned to flit from place to place on their computers. Short blurbs, blips of information are what is associated with computers. Sitting and reading a long passage is hard for them. I assigned a pop-sci article recently and many didn't realize there were multiple screens. Those that did were glaze-eyed by the third screen, and that was with a lot of graphics to make the text spacier. They were clicking to see what else there was; things on the page that moved caught their eye.

They do that with the etext, too, even if the only thing they can get to is the etext. They like things that move. They scoot from place to place, not as they read but to prevent reading. It's damnable.

the ones who you assigned the pop-sci article. or what grade are they in?

She has e-textbooks for her AP physics class and the statistics class she's taking at the local community college - the other classes all have regular textbooks that she has to lug around (and hates!)



I think its going to be the wave of the future but after reading your account I wonder if it might be better if there's a choice for the students.

Because really, it should be all about them imho.

I would be curious to take a look at the e-version of it. My daughter used the physical Giancoli textbook which was far superior to my Halliday and Resnick - quite possibly the worst textbook ever written in my opinion. Of course my version dates to the late 1970s.

She's in California finishing high school and I'm in Illinois. The deal is that she gets to sleep in on Sundays and she calls to skype when she's awake (heh, obviously I've woken her up too often on her day to sleep in and she gets a tad bit cranky!)

Since its "only" almost noon in CA, chances are she's just waking up or even maybe still asleep...

Her teacher also assigns reading/problems from the Berkley Physics Course. Its a free downloadable e-textbook.

http://physicsebooklibrary.blogspot.com/2013/03/berkeley-physics-course-ebook-download.html

She says she likes the Berkley series best. Her teacher is really good though and my daughter's gone from being pretty indifferent to the sciences to this physics class being her favorite class she's ever taken.

It turns out reading is tactile as well as visual. Often we remember what we read based on the location of a passage in a physical book (beginning, middle, end). There are other components identified in the research as well, but the study really made me think and I hope that policy makers will not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem with embracing technology is that in our current state of affairs, some "leaders" think it is cheaper and don't care about being thoughtful in how use of technology is applied.

It will still be from textbook publishers. The use of tablets as opposed to print books will do nothing to change the content.

The monkey wrenches Texas throws into the works:

Wrench 1: textbooks are huge. Huge books require shitloads of plates to print.

Wrench 2: the "textbook" is actually two books - the student version and the teacher version.

Wrench 3: compared to, say, Brides Magazine (a book about the same page count as a high school textbook but that sells in the millions), they don't sell a large number of textbooks.

All tolled, there's no financially-sensible way to print two different texts. They print one, and that one's content is dictated by the Texas Board of Education.

("intellectual property&quot is what you're paying for, not wood pulp. Copyright is the license fee that goes to the writers and publishers, and doesn't "scale" with the size of the publishing run--if a work is &quot more) expensive to buy the copyright for" the authors are simply charging you more for each copy.

Which tends to support my point that ipad publishing isn't going to be a big money saver to students.

Which physical textbooks have been too cost-prohibitive to allow

Another is the near-absolute extinction of the Outdated Textbook, the 100-Pound Backpack and all the other wonders of modern academia.

As for obsolescence...aren't e-textbooks basically a huge fillable PDF form, with embedded MP4 files when the author wants to use a movie to illustrate a point? That should run on anything that reads Acrobat files.

I haven't ever really trusted e-books, as they are too easily destroyed by everything from magnets to dropping. Your entire library could be fratzed in a second.

The object lesson for me was the fate of the original Kindle edition of George Orwell's novel 1984. It was advertised. People paid for and downloaded it. But when they turned on their readers the next day, it had vaporized. There had been an unresolved dispute with the publisher or copyright holder or something -- and Amazon just gave everyone their money back and vaporized the book.

Try doing that with a paper and ink copy of a book.

ever tried propping a door open with a tablet.

Win-win.

Tablets allow too much freedom of focus, which on one hand has some advantages but overall, wouldn't be as effective as a good
textbook. If the tablets are limited to certain preplanned guidance and information, it could also work.

Most have smartphones.

For instance, and this is an overly simplistic example, you can't unlock Chapter 2 until you test well on Chapter 1.

there really isn't that much newly-discovered to justify buying new textbooks continually for up-dates that can easily be discussed in class with news articles.

Kids don't steal textbooks! But then, there's the book-storage issue.

With books, though, nobody turns a page to play a game, heh.

I teach at a medical school, and everything is on a tablet. I lecture to the back side of 100 or so tablets. Everything we say is available to students in advance, and some students never attend a lecture. I've gotten used to being podcast. In the long run, this will replace most teachers and especially higher ed faculty.

profit from those $200 textbooks today will still demand to profit, even after the ($10) cost of actually printing the material is set to the side.

And then you still have to pay for the ipads. And charge them daily. And replace the broken ones. And have an extra for when little bobby forgets his.

And then they're all obsolete every three years, even if they survive the children's use.

EMFs are very harmful to young people.

Textbooks are an ideal thing for tablets, for many reasons. I won't list them all, because they are so obvious. But here are a few reasons that make texts on tablets fantastic:

1. Updatability - Updates can be made at any point, even to the level of correcting minor errors.
2. Portability - One tablet can hold hundreds of texts. The advantages of that are many and obvious.
3. Multimedia capabilities - A text on a tablet can include links to other resources. Videos, expanded information, lectures, and even more. All those footnotes become active links, which means they'll be more likely to be used. And then there are those videos. Reading about FDR? Watch this important speech he made.

work for engineering, science, and math problems. Might enhance the learning experience, but right now static textbooks on a tablet are a bad idea in these subjects. Try flipping back from a problem set to the example problem for reference. My daughter lived with that in Mechanics of Materials last semester. My very visual daughter is studying engineering (she also likes to make and edit movies). I could see her combining these passions to make a truly dynamite textbook in a computational subject. As for now having the online version of the textbook has mostly been a failure for my daughters. That is why I pay to print online textbooks when they are open access.

That is a dynamite example of cell division. You still need to be able to access the material in some static form.

incorporate features. Your example of the problem set to the example is a good one. All tablet-based reading software allows for internal, as well as external links, along with features like bookmarking and highlighting. Internal links and jumps are just one of the features where tablets excel.

Just because some publishers are not using those features does not mean that will continue to be the case. In fact, I'm certain it will not continue to be the case. Let me tell you about an experiment I did:

I write complete websites for a living. I prepare the content for the web designers I work with in Microsoft Word. I include internal and external links in that content, and have a table of contents with links to all of the pages. Within the content, I use links wherever they are necessary to jump within the content, so that the web designer can quickly replace them with links as he builds the site.

The experiment was this: I took one of my website documents, one for a website with 200 individual pages, in Microsoft Word and ran it through a free ebook conversion program. All of those programs accept Word documents. I then loaded the converted ebook file into my Kindle. Guess what happened. When I opened the document, it was an ebook. All of the text formatting, links, bullet lists, text boxes, etc. appeared in the ebook. Even photos and illustrations I had included in the Word document were there. All internal and external links in the document worked perfectly, and my linked table of contents was a linked table of contents in the ebook.

One step and I had a functional interactive ebook, simply by using a free conversion program to turn that Word document I had written for my web designer to use in building the website. One conversion step, and it was an ebook. There were a few formatting issues with it, but I understood those, and have changed the way I set up my Word documents to fix that.

So, now I'm working on an ebook to sell. I've thought for several years about writing this particular book, but it's one that will have a limited audience, so the only way it can make money for me is as an ebook. I'm about half done with it, now. I'm including lots of links to all sorts of internal and external resources. When it's finished, and I've proofread it half a dozen times, and tested all the links, it will take just one step to go from Word document to an ebook I can immediately put on Amazon and other ebook resources for sale. No publisher will be involved and I'll do my own marketing for it. Will it be a success? Who knows?

My point is that the technology exists and is in current use. All that is required to make ebook texts far more useful than paper texts is to implement the capabilities in those texts. That can be done at any stage, including the writing stage, which is how I do it. When my document is complete, the ebook is just one step away from being completed. That's where things are going. Instead of static images in a text, videos can be available. Instead of textual references to additional information, links will be used. The possibilities are endless. The publishers who make use of all of the capabilities will thrive. The ones who don't won't. It's that simple.

There are others, as well.

1. The textbooks can be updated.

This is a decided plus. On the other hand, most K-12 content doesn't need updating very much, except to be "topical" and keep the kids "engaged." Educators like to measure "engagement" time; however there's not a good correlation between that and achievement.

It's also a decided minus. The textbooks past scrutiny in being adopted, and part of the scrutiny is making sure they match state standards. If they change ... they may no longer meet standards.

2. You don't download textbooks from these sites. You log in for access. I've set up my classes only to have an IT error delete them. That happened two years ago. This year there was some accounting snafu that froze all the accounts--and when they were unfrozen, a lot of classes didn't "unstick."

This is in addition to Internet slowdowns, wifi failures, and having kids batteries die or their computers off in the repair center. Among the worst problems are the kids with tablets in school but without Internet at home. They don't want to admit it, and can't access the textbook even though they "have" it. Can't download the content, either.

3. Multimedia is cool. It's a plus. But it's an adjunct. And a distraction. Kids readily replace core content with multimedia. Had kids look at kinds of kinetic energy and found them watching the little molecules vibrate and rotate with glee. They were fascinated by the movement and bright colors. Their little mammalian brains were tickled. Their prefrontal cortexes were completely disengaged, thank you, and after watching the molecules show different degrees of freedom and movements they couldn't even say, "Ah, that was H2O."

4. Supporting materials is cool. I put it in the same class as multimedia, really. But you can lead a horse to water ...

Then there are the downsides.

5. Content's not formatted for all screens. That may improve.

6. You have to monitor kids more closely. Those who would talk still talk. But now you have kids who want to shop, who watch movies, who play games (I *hate* "cool math games&quot . They use proxy sites and text or Skype. You block them one way or the other and they go wifi-less and use thumb drives. Or store stuff on their hard drives. They use wifi hotspot functionalities on their smartphones to avoid using the school's wifi entirely.

7. Glitches are a huge pain in the butt. Gave a test last year on computer (btw, tablets really push teachers to multiple-choice tests, and help administrators love team-wide or dept-wide multiple choice tests because they get the "data", however dubious its quality). Ten minutes in the server froze. Ooh--everybody saw the test, it was only on computer, and so a day was wasted and I had to make up another test.

Another favorite glitch was the Java that came on the kids' computers. The site upgraded the online labs and prompted all the kids to upgrade their Java. Kids can't upgrade their tablet's software--they don't have administrator privileges. Halfway through the upgrade install it failed and the applets wouldn't run. Warned the next class *not* to click "update" but a lot of them did without thinking. Months later the district upgraded Java for all tablets, but for those months all online labs were a disaster.

8. Online books are really variable in quality. Texas has a few options. There's Rice University's StemScopes, which isn't at the highest cognitive level. But it's in little chunks, because on computer it's harder to keep track of where you are. Read 100 pages? Sure. But if it's in little bits where each day you have a different page it's easier. In little chunks, it's harder to see the overall level of the text. Other providers are the same.

I liked StemScopes until somebody told me to print out a chunk of them and examine them back to back.

9. All the whistles and bells get in the way. McGraw-Hill's site for textbooks is amazing. Test banks, online gradebook, etc., etc. But student data confidentiality's an issue. And you become reliant on them. Too reliant. And when all the materials produced by a single provider, Quizlet and other sites have all the answers. They patrol these sites, but they lose.

Nothing like giving a student a 50-minute assignment and 10 minutes later have 30 of them turn it in completed, mostly with the exact same answers. Ctrl-v, Ctrl-c. Ctrl-v, Ctrl-c. Now, if the class was "advanced cutting and pasting in Word" that would be great.

We have problems to work out. But you missed some advantages.

10. Text-to-speech. A dyslexic kid can put on his earbuds and listen to the text being read.

11. Multiple versions. Some publishers have "essentials" versions of the readings for kids "grade level minus 2 years". They can't read the text at grade level, they get at least enough to pass. Some (fewer) publishers have their "essentials" in other languages for LEPs.


My favorite kludge for online textbooks is to have a class set. Then everybody gets a copy in class but at home they have online access. The drawback is that as the online version gets updated, or when kids need the "essentials" version, they're stuck with the non-updated ink-on-paper text in class.

In other words, the ideal is a mixed environment, not too extreme one way or the other.

I'd prefer to lug around one iPad than ten textbooks.

In the 1960s, though, it was a distant vision.

If it is a kindle or something of that ilk, that is one thing, but doesn't research show that reading long texts on PCs and iPads is more tiring than reading on paper? That must definitely be taken into consideration. As must whatever else can be done on the tablet - kids and teenagers have less impulse control, and don't need the temptations. Trust me, in our school district, all high school students have laptops, and the learning has degraded a lot. It's not worth the youtube vids of lectures etc - they aren't using them for that anyway.

I don't see textbooks lasting too much longer.

textbooks get beat to heck after only a few uses. My youngest kid's pre-calc book is duct taped along the spine, and I think he's the third kid to use it. It's literally falling apart.

Every high school student (and really nearly every middle school student) already has either a laptop or a tablet. A laptop is an unstated required piece of equipment for the high school.

My oldest takes his math classes at a local private university (within walking distance of the high school). For multivariate calculus last fall, the instructor spent part of the first lecture railing against the textbook industry. The professor didn't care what calculus textbook his students bought - any one would do - because he was teaching concepts and material that didn't rely on one book. Why? Because multivariate calculus is multivariate calculus. For this term's differential equation book, he did ask them to purchase a book but noted that any edition of the book was fine (the newest version was over $175, the previous version could be had for about $40.)

My high schoolers have very few text books. Spanish, English, History - all taught without textbooks. I think the physics and chemistry ones are online. Math is still a physical textbook, but in middle school that was online too.

Our district is shifting towards tablets. Our parent organization is raising money to provide each kid from middle-high school a tablet. My kids don't find that neat - they think it's a waste of money since all the kids have their own computers. But many area schools are trying this, and from what I'm reading it seems to be an attempt to equalize access (which is a good thing) and provide kids with less textbooks (again, a good thing).

if the text is downloaded at the school and the kid is not dependent on having internet access at home
cause lordy know a lot of kids don't have it

stranger to ask.

since they got rid of lockers, so students have to lug heavy book bags around all day.

But up here, all the lockers were removed from the schools, undoubtedly in an anti-drug/gun strategy. Now everything has to be carried by the students, so they're going around carrying 60 pound backpacks full of books, etc. every day. I can't imagine having to do that, myself.

but i'm a bit out of the loop at this point

i guess now the kids have to carry their drugs and guns in their coat pockets

But friends of mine with kids who were still in school, have mentioned having to buy a couple of new backpacks for each kid every year, because they'd fall apart from all the weight.
And, like you said - they'd just carry their contraband in their pockets or backpacks. So it doesn't seem to make much sense anyhow.

I've read War and Peace in hardcover, paperback, and on Nook. I enjoyed it equally on all three formats.

I'm SO sick of seeing kids as young as 4, with their heads buried into a screen as they are out in the world. Over and over I've seen parents hand their smartphones to their toddlers or young kids to "shut them up" while they're out in the world.. instead of interacting and OBSERVING how it is to be among other people. I've seen kids as young as 5 with their own ipads, who drag them everywhere.. and sit in a corner of a store while the parent shops.... the kids NEVER see or are able to emulate how adults interact, or are unable to create anything with their own imagination. It's all about "entertain me! distract me!" their brains are incapable now of slowing down once they've been raised on flashing images and quick cuts.

In schools, kids need to have books. They need to learn penmanship. They need to understand what it's like to interact with others.. not bury their faces in screens. we're destroying out culture... we are. After school, see the kids "walking" down the street with their heads buried in the screen of their phones, with headphones on. I see groups of kids now all wearing headphones, walking "together."

I admire parents and educators who understand the value of human interaction, and the lost arts of books and writing, and etiquette. I was so bummed when my own daughter, who swore that she hated that stuff, is now the parent of an 18 month old that is SO addicted to cell phones, that she throws a tantrum if she can't get to it. Because she was given the phone to play with.. to distract her.. with a kid's app on it. Now, if you go to their house you have to hide your phone,because the baby will try to open your purse to find your phone. Same with the ipad, too. You think kids raised like that are better off going to school staring at a screen??

Heck, in my house the tv was rarely on at all. The girls read, they played outside, and when we drove.. we did not have a DVD player in the car. They got to watch the world go by, and actually talk to each other. I hate what technology has done to children.. and families. Expect more kids to be on anti-depressants by the millions in the next few years.

They observed how absolutely everyone has their heads buried in them now. I wonder if that will fade after the newness wears off. I kind of doubt it though because the majority of these kids probably have their own personal laptop at home (many already have tablets as well). It is a pretty well to do community.

My kids spend too much time on the computer, but they are taking intensive academic loads. I do mandate we take an hour a day walk with the dogs and discuss things. Unless my wife is watching it, the television is never on. I waste my time on DU with some binge watching on Netflix every so often. My oldest was 16 before she got her first cell phone (not a smartphone). I still feel frustrated about all the texting back and forth. I want to scream "just call the person".

Too bad I wasn't a child prodigy or I would've been making mad cash on this idea.

and I am totally annoyed by the way they do it. They make kids wear uniforms to lessen class distinction, but then tell you to send a device (your choice - whether you can't afford it to fancy iPad). The schools need to negotiate deals with the tablet companies and have them set up with the apps they require. I'd even be fine with parents contributing to cost on a sliding scale (based on income like school lunch). Right now it is very piecemeal in some districts and I don't think that is working very well. It's definitely the future but they need to work on implementation.

FWIW I've talked to friends in two other countries about this topic. The one in Hong Kong says required for her pre-teen and they must supply device. The one in UK says required for their pre-teen but provided by the school. I'm not sure whether these are public/private schools however.

Textbooks are heavy, outdated quickly, and expensive. Digital versions which can be updated, searched, highlighted, etc., and can all fit on one light-weight tablet, are definitely the way to go.

Of course, there's an investment in tablets that goes with that. We have a small collection of i-pads at my school that are used for a variety of purposes; my students sometimes use them to create documents that they can save to the server and print or email to me for grading without printing; I wish all my students were using them all the time. They also use them for alternative formats to demonstrate learning, in addition to traditional written work. Recently, some submitted their research on historical figures as video interviews, with an interviewer asking required questions and other questions coming from a "studio audience" that required them to really know their subject. Those were popular, lol.

When they are doing assigned readings, I'm often photocopying passages out of books so that they can mark up the text, annotate, etc., because using sticky notes is tedious. They like marking the actual text, whether it's a text book, a novel, a poem, an article, or any other kind of text. They can highlight and annotate digital copy in a way that they can't in a borrowed text book.

I know my students would love a light-weight backpack or book bag that only had to hold a tablet, a binder, a lunch, and sometimes some gym clothes. I know I'd love having them turn in tablets at the end of the year to be reformatted, rather than getting back all those books thrashed in lockers and backpacks that have to be taped, repaired, etc..

But with paper you can make notes and fold the pages and stick other notes inside and a cold little screen doesn't compare. But then, I'm old.

There's so much to keep up on that sadly, I'm lacking there. I still love the smell of musty paper.

butterflies come out of cocoons and watch the night sky instead of the facsimile on a screen. Now of course, my livelihood depends on me understanding the other and I fumble.

I've seen many "studying" students succumb to the allure of solitaire.

It is the way it is. There is no going backwards.

Our Spanish textbook is outdated in how to present verbs, the order in which students learn best, and even the pictures. We won't get anything new for at least 5 years, though. Thing is, I'm used to teaching with my classes on an LMS for extra help and resources, but many of my students have no devices to access any of it on. If we got rid of the textbooks and just went with our LMS and various online/virtual/scanned in materials, it would really be so much better and cheaper in the long run.