[CALIBK12] California opens the door to free open source digital textbooks

[Blanche Woolls]

Hello all,

This morning's LA Times, P. A7 has a 1/3 page, 2 column article "Senate 
Would Let Texts Go Digital" telling how the LA Unified can now do this. We 
haven't time to waste with "Can we, should we." We must.

Again, we need to think in the present.

Blanche

On Tue, 12 May 2009, kznadalin wrote:

> Just one thought:  How will the content providers stay in business?  They will need to
> sell an electronic license to each school district or something, or they will go
> belly-up.  I love the notion of e-textbooks, but would like to see it happen in a
> sustainable fashion so we don't build an infrastructure that later falls apart.
> Best,Karen
> 
> On May 8, 2009, at 7:52:30 AM, calibk12-request at lists.sjsu.edu wrote:
>
>       Message: 1
>       Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 19:22:11 -0700
>       From: "Jeanne Nelson" <porschej at earthlink.net>
>       Subject: Re: [CALIBK12] California opens the door to free open source
>       digital textbooks
>       To: <calibk12 at lists.sjsu.edu>
>       Message-ID: <967B502CC5CC4563AC4D6DD4EDF172D9 at yoursz6x6sefxo>
>       Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>       Hello everyone,
>
>       Weighing in on the discussion, when you issue four or five texts to a high
>       school student, you are issuing the price of a Kindle, and digital
>       textbooks
>       do not get lost or damaged or returned late. The Kindle may be lost or
>       damaged, but I anticipate the cost will go down dramatically, like every
>       other technology.
>
>       I was amused to notice that these free digital materials target math and
>       science, right after California has completed their adoption of texts in
>       both subject areas. Now, if these digital materials had targeted language
>       arts, the next adoption area, I'd have been really excited! There would
>       actually be a cost savings.
>
>       The Kindle has the additional advantage of controlling the print size, and
>       I
>       believe audio is also provided. You probably know that today, Amazon
>       announced their textbook version of the Kindle, and agreements with
>       Pearson
>       and Cengage for texts.
>
>       Jeanne Nelson, Ed.D.
>       Murrieta Valley USD
> 
> 
> 
>