A Kindle for Every Student
A reform group wants to puts an E-textbook in every student’s hand. Not everyone is thrilled
Corrected on 8/27/09: A previous version of this story suggested that the Democratic Leadership Council report asserts that the use of Kindles is more important than better standards, merit pay for teachers, or rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of America's aging schools.
According to a new report from the Democratic Leadership Council, digital reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle could be a useful tool for improving student learning.
In a proposal released last month, the group argues that a K-12 education system where each student has an E-book reader like Amazon's Kindle is "inevitable" and that we shouldn't wait "a decade or two" to achieve it.
Thomas Z. Freedman, the primary author of the paper, writes that having a "Kindle in every backpack" (the title of the proposal) is not just an educational gimmick but could improve education quality and save money.
"For less money than is spent on conventional textbooks, E-textbooks, over time, could deliver a regularly updated, interactive, and 21st-century education to our children," effectively competing for their attention in the digital age, says Freedman.
The Kindle is a portable hardware device developed by Amazon.com that lets you wirelessly download and read digital books (and magazines and newspapers). Similar devices include the Sony Reader and the Hanlin eReader.
The authors of the paper cite research by Project Tomorrow, an education nonprofit group, that found that 29 percent of students already use an E-textbook or online curriculum and have clear ideas about what a useful E-textbook would look like. Only 5 percent of parents dislike the concept of E-textbooks, according to the research.
The DLC paper proposes a yearlong pilot program that would furnish some 400,000 students—about half a percent of all K-12 students nationwide—with government-supplied E-reading devices. If judged a success, the program would be scaled up to include the entire student population within four years. Freedman writes that the plan would initially cost about $9 billion more than the amount currently spent on print textbooks—about $6 billion—but that savings of $700 million would kick in during the fifth year of the rollout. He says that $500 million would be saved annually in the years immediately following.
Not so fast, some education experts say. Jing Lei, assistant professor of instructional design, development, and evaluation at Syracuse University's school of education and author of the book The Digital Pencil, is doubtful that five years from now the Kindle (if such a device is still on the market) would offer the same advantages that it does today.
"Then what do you do?" she asks. "Do you keep updating all the hardware and software? There's a lot of long-term costs of implementing a program like this."
Corrine Gregory, president and founder of SocialSmarts, a program that teaches students social skills and values, says that the proposal is rife with flaws. She says it's an example of the Whac-A-Mole approach to education reform: "Whenever something new pops up, the immediate, knee-jerk reaction is, 'Oh, we should do this .' We never really step back and ask ourselves what problem exactly are we trying to solve.
"Kids' ability to stay on task and focused has nothing to do with type of vehicle by which they're consuming their education," Gregory says. "Bringing in another gadget will only exacerbate that problem. And how will the teacher control or monitor what the student is supposedly reading?"
At the Las Virgenes Unified School District in Southern California, educators are leveraging the capabilities of E-textbooks on PCs and in printouts rather than on portable, Kindle-like devices. Superintendent Donald Zimring admits there was an initial break-in period for the teachers but says that the learning benefits have been notable.
The district—99 percent of whose students already have computers at home—has been using digital books in fourth- and fifth-grade science classes and 11th-grade math classes since 2007. With the technology, students can view video demonstrations of lab experiments or perform digital heart dissections. Math lessons are taught on IBM ThinkPad laptops.
There is no evidence, however, that the E-texts improved math or reading scores, Zimring says.
While he says that there are educational advantages of E-textbooks, whatever their delivery method might be, he stresses that their success in the classroom will not come simply from repurposing textbook information to fit on a screen. He argues that digital books work best when they are used to bring together multimedia from a variety of sources to support a more comprehensive, interactive form of learning.
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Reader Comments
Re: Accessibility
Don't blind children already have special textbooks. While you can argue that they won't be able to receive the health benefits of an e-textbook is it really okay for us to put off the potential solution for many students' discontent with heavy textbooks because one minority will not be able to benefit. We're talking about the health of our children here.
re:theCampusCenter.com and Kindle/ASU lawsuit
theCampusCenter.com sounds like potentially a wonderful solution to the problem of how expensive higher education has gotten coupled with the huge hit that higher education institutions took to the portfolios providing the backbone of their financing as well as the problem of various student/faculty disabilities.
Obviously bugs have to be worked out (can't we do this cooperatively rather than with lawsuits over everything?). For instance, in spite of spellcheck, there is a spelling error on the first page of theCampusCenter website ('as' should be 'has'). And, sure,the advertising would of course help with costs, but as any experienced educator knows, it adds to the distractability and will decrease learning if mixed with text, and messes with comprehension of even the home page,etc.. That needs to be rethought. Is it encripted to maintain the security necessary to keep other students from plagiarizing/stealing research/identity theft (apparently, nothing can be made that secure so far with electronic information)? But we have 'known' since the 1970s that stay-at-home learning would become a possibility, if not nececessity/reality. It has to be explored in depth, and all ramifications have to be considered and answered. Savings in such things as dorm costs could be hugely beneficial to those students who will never be able to afford to graduate from an elite university under the current cost situation. (Current research on graduation rates doesn't note the obvious reason that lower income students don't graduate: college costs have prohibited anyone who isn't rich from going to elite private, or (in Texas, especially) upper echelon public, universities. Thirty years ago, an average middle class family could, through various means of savings, cutting costs here and there, and student work/scholarships, afford to send their children to college, graduating with little to no debt. Impossible now.)
Electronics have enabled differently-abled students and workers to have access to so many of the same opportunities to work and learn, irregardless of vision/hearing or other difficulties. Why would we not be able to resolve this again to tremendous advantage?
So, Kindle in it's current form won't do. But, eventually, if everyone can cut the greed factor and cooperate (include universities with community colleges/each other), maybe....
... sigh....
Can't we all just get along? Can't we think of others as much as ourselves? Please, people?
Clearly, will come in time ... but for now ...
this is a wonderful suburban solution. Has Mr. Freedman ventured out of his protected suburbs or his private school urban fantasyland lately? Has he seen the chaos that a large portion of American school children live in from day to day? Or the vast un-e-savvy majority of parents in inner city, small town and rural communities? Wake up, this is fine to think of as pilot programs, testing it in a variety of communities, but widespread? Ubiquitous? I don't think so.
Further, "reduce the cost of textbooks" - always a nice thought. But does Freedman think that the true "cost" of textbooks is in their paper, printing and binding ("ppb")? And that by eliminating those costs ... we will significantly reduce the costs to schools or students? Think again: the cost of textbooks is in their vast development costs, development that is DEMANDED by customers (teachers, students, parents). Such as: fairly correct and current information; complete instructor resources (print and online testbanks and normed testing; lecture support/powerpoint; supplemental materials correlated to text; additional activities correlated to text; full solutions; instructor guide with lecture notes and moment-by-moment "what to do" notes) and student resources (online quizzing; worksheets; student solutions; online practice and games; pod casts; and more). The typical high school texts in the disciplines with which I am familiar: $2M+ per grade level (so a series of K-6 or 9-12 might be $10-$20M to develop ... BEFORE ppb. Are the states willing to subsidize these costs? Certainly publishers will work with groups to find solutions, and they already are working on dozens of e-solutions. But to think that magically ... "a kindle in every backpack" will solve state budget crises quickly ... is silly. State budget crises require three things: 1) funding to support education (yes, sometimes that means taxation), 2) efficiencies brought into the delivery of education and services (reduction of administrative costs comes to mind), and 3) the slowing of runaway retirement/pension programs and career-end salary "spiking" with an aging population with higher life expectancies.
respectfully,
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