Another bite at digital textbooks

I blogged earlier about Apple’s new digital textbooks, and the promise they held out for greater competition in the textbook market.

Here’s an article from Education Next that makes many of the same points . . . and takes another swipe at the argument that “for profit” means “anti-student.”

From the article:

“The chatter in various social media about the announcement extend two faulty themes that needlessly limit educational technology discussions.

The first misguided frame . . ., is whether technology, in this case digital textbooks, is a ‘magic bullet.’ . . . Of course it’s not and anybody who claims so is foolish. But debating this point gets us nowhere.

What’s most important to understand about the digital textbook effort is that it’s an opportunity to open up a large amount of existing public money that has been locked into use by a very small and closed set of publishers. Opening up classrooms to new technologies in no way guarantees that textbooks or digital instructional materials will be better. But, it does provide the opportunity to shift power to educators, offering the possibility for not only more customization by teachers, but also access to a greater array of better materials . . .

The second faulty frame [that limit is the conspiratorial suspicion of nefarious intent: any technology initiative is just a cover for private profit-seeking. But let’s be serious. We wouldn’t be having this discussion around school modernization. Construction companies make a lot of money on educational projects. We understand though, that this is a reason to exercise strong oversight of public funds. It’s not a reason to oppose modernizing crumbling facilities.

In reality, opposition to digital textbooks cements corporate control of instructional materials. This is about technology-driven industry change. Again, our K-12 schools already spend billions each year on textbooks – almost all purchased from the same small set of publishers. New companies are surely aiming at these dollars, just as Google, Facebook, and Craigslist have siphoned off newspaper ad revenues. And, this industry change also opens the doors for open educational resources that can be freely shared and modified. This is the real battle, between new and old ways of doing business, open and closed, as seen in the recent debate over SOPA.”

Blog readers know that I like competition, and that I like opportunities to give teachers more choice and more power to teach students more effectively. So what do you think?

Here’s a link to the article: educationnext.org/digital-textbooks-oer-and-more-from-digital-learning-day/