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This is how Arnold apparently feels about print media.
Looks like the days of backpacks looking bigger than some of the kids wearing them is over.
On Monday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced to whom else, schoolchildren in Sacramento, that he plans to introduce an initiative that will make schools start trading in traditional print textbooks for digital ones.
The measure he is introducing is appropriately named the Digital Textbook Initiative and it will begin to focus on the core subjects of math and science. The proposal is centered on the fact that kids in school these days are more familiar with getting their information in digital form.
Oddly enough, Arnold used the examples of Twitter and Facebook, not sure what those have to do with learning but hey, they certainly are popular.
No love for MySpace or Friendster apparently.
He also brought up the notion that kids hate lugging around gigantic textbooks, bring them out for an hour and then have to carry them around campus for the rest of the day. (If your schools were anything like mine, you felt like a Sherpa out there sometimes.)
It is safe to say that kids are luckier than all of us were when we were in school.
According to the Govenator, California is the first state to propose such an initiative and remarked that it makes a lot of sense because Silicon Valley is based in the state meaning that we are on the forefront of technological innovation.
The brilliance here should be just seeping out of your monitor and onto your keyboard.
Really though, it actually makes a lot of sense. California is in the midst of a crippling budget crisis and the state government is trying to slash costs in any way it possibly can. We’re talking $24 billion dollars in debt here.
Wow.
So, how is this going to help?
Well, with the average price of a textbook hovering around $100 Arnie, says it will slash off somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 to $400 million dollars just for math and science text books alone. If the initiative were to expand to other school subjects, it would encompass several other hundreds of million dollars.
Although this is going to be met with tons of skepticism, kudos to the California government for coming up with an alternative that one, could benefit kids and two, save the state money.
A far cry from one writer’s opinion of them only mere weeks ago.
Enough with the sugar coating, the plan is going to potentially hampered with problems and since he didn’t elaborate too much, let’s take it upon ourselves to do it for him.
One, what schools will be covered under this? All of them? Some of them? And what will qualify schools to start getting rid of the paper textbooks to be replaced by digital ones?
Two, what company is going to supply this sort of technology to millions and millions of students state-wide? Is the government going to subsidize this? Is every student going to get a Kindle?
Three, why didn’t they make this switch a long time ago?
Four, are kindergarteners supposed to be able to work these electronics? Or will they, you know, keep some of those “books made of paper” aside in some cobwebbed corner for them?
The 5th graders will be having a field day with this, just picture it now:
“Paper reader! Paper reader!”
“Am not!”
Is this sort of environment healthy for children trying to learn?
In all seriousness, is this going to be starting with the high schools and moving down or what? Details would certainly be nice.
The great thing is that these are problems that can be easily solved if the government doesn’t blunder this like they have, well, lots of other things.
This will be great with a well-thought out model.
Its one thing for the Governor to say it but it’s another to actually put it into action. So there is only one thing left to say:
Come on, California, we can do this!
For more info: Contact Adam: admillios@gmail.com
Comments
The US has gone bonkers. Helping companies work one billion with 80 billion, paying people to get rid of a clunker and sign up for debt on a new one, bankrupt GM buying other bankrupt company, neither on has any money, is nutts. Giving a car company along with our tax money to FIAT,(they are gonna cream the good parts and dump the rest back on taxpayers) Alot of STUPID things going on. Please someone wakeup, we are gonna loose alot of money and be in big trouble. PLEASE!!! Stop this idiot bailout mess now.
Perfect timing. Since, you know, California is Bankrupt... let's spend money replacing things that work just fine... like books!
It is about time that schools get out of text-books. However, let there be a majority of teachers not high-officials in schools or computer specialist be the final say on this issue. The final software and hardware needs to be truly useful in the school environment. Do not let know-it-alls muck the process up with something that does not fit the school teaching process. Kids will love the process if it is designed to be both fun and educational. No more paper-cuts either! You need to be able to finance kids that cannot affort the new technology. The software should be able to work with all types of book materials and work well with photos, testing, etc. Testing still needs to be done on paper and laid out by the teachers were possible. Teachers need to be able to grade according to their methods.
There already serious and free e-book alternatives. I found www.bookboon.com where you can download all the textbooks you want, without registering or paying.
As a self-confessed e-book geek and LSE student, I agree whole heartedly with the message sent out by Schwarzenegger. It is clear that the days of wasting money upon expensive, rapidly out dated, hard-bound textbooks will soon become something consigned to the (digital) history books of the future - once educators, students and publishers alike began to recognize and harness the full power of 21st Century technology.
The guys at bookboon.com for example publish a huge range of textbooks available to download free of charge in a pdf e-book format with no registration. They are already offering a 100% free textbook solution for students, colleges and universities designed for the digital age.
I sincerely hope that whatever the proposed solution is, it does *not* involve DRM-ridden text, otherwise they're not going to be saving much money (I'm sure the price for ebooks will be about on par with their textbook counterparts, if the greedy companies have their say).
Also, portable ebook devices like Kindle are just asking to get broken by kids. It doesn't make sense to give things like that to students and expect them to take good care of them. I can see now, written by a sharpie on the screen, "In case of fire, click up, left, page down."
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