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April 15, 2001
Getting a Read on E-Books (cont'd)
The Content Dilemma
Other Issues
What's Available
Not Just Textbooks
The Content Dilemma
One of the biggest barriers to making e-books work in K-12 schools has been the lack of content. It's a catch-22: Educators are reluctant to adopt e-books because there isn't enough instructional material to make them worth the investment. And publishers are hesitant to convert their textbooks until there is significant demand from schools.
At Resurrection School, getting content proved to be daunting. "The school used nine different textbooks by five different publishers, all of whom gave us permission to convert their texts into electronic form, but they offered little support," says Searchlight's Walusis. Eventually his company did convert some textbooks. In the end, however, they were forced to rely primarily on public domain books, which don't have copyright restrictions, and teacher-created material.
Jane Lehmann, a librarian at Spencerport High School in Rochester, N.Y., encountered a similar problem during an e-book pilot conducted by five libraries in the surrounding area. (In the fall of 1999, the school received two Rocket eBook readers and two Softbook Readers as part of a grant funded by the Library Services Technology Act.) While Lehmann observed that kids enjoyed the devices and found them convenient and easy to use, the available titles were not, as a whole, well suited for the K-12 setting. They tended to be popular fiction and nonfiction for adult reading tastes. For the devices to be worth the expense, says Lehmann, they needed more of the options traditionally offered in print books, such as serial publications of varying readability levels and titles more appropriate for the teenage audience.
Other Issues
There is another reason that e-books have been slow to take hold: publishers and e-book developers have been struggling to establish industry standards and deal with intellectual property issues.
Up to this point, digital books have been plagued by incompatible formats for content and encryption. This means, for example, that a book you read through a Gemstar e-book reader cannot be read via PalmPilot, and vice versa. To address this problem, the Open eBook Forum was formed to create a set of common technical specifications to ensure that e-books can be read on any type of device, while at the same time protecting digital copyright material from being copied or redistributed. For publishers, this means they'll only have to digitize their materials once. For users, they'll still have to choose a format-right now Microsoft and Adobe are the companies to watch.
Another aspect of copyright that is especially tricky for education is getting permission from rights holders to go digital. This is because textbooks have thousands of contributors who are often "permissioned" for print editions but not for digital versions. For example, during the e-book pilot at Austin Middle School, most of the print materials school officials wanted to use were not authorized for digital use. Fortunately, many publishers now permission print and digital material at the same time to overcome this red tape issue.
What's Available
In spite of these challenges, it is encouraging to see that electronic book offerings in education continue to increase. Until recently, most of the action has been in higher education with companies like WizeUp, which produces digital versions of college textbooks, and MetaText, a division of netLibrary that recently partnered with Houghton Mifflin to convert some of their college titles into Internet-based textbooks with multimedia, navigation, and annotation features.
But lately K-12 publishers, many of whom also publish content for colleges and universities, are beginning to create e-book content for schools. McGraw-Hill recently announced that it's putting six middle and high school science books online, with other titles in the works. These e-texts will include the content of the print versions integrated with audio and video links and assessment tools. Austin-based textbook publisher Barrett Kendall (BK) now offers print and multimedia-enhanced online editions of its content-and grabbed state approval from Texas and Florida for both versions. This doesn't, however, mean the demise of its print textbooks. Schools adopting BK's texts must purchase the print books; students then automatically get a password to access the digital versions. "Online books aren't the alternative," says BK's director of public relations, Jeff Pennell, "they're an augmentation. Here and there teachers will use the online text only, but the hardback editions will always be there as long as Web sites and servers go down."
At the same time, other publishers are not converting entire textbooks but instead are ramping up their Web-based supplementary materials designed to be used in conjunction with print books. Pearson has taken the plunge with its Learning Network. Classwell Learning Group, with backing from Houghton Mifflin, plans to roll out a subscription-based service that provides textbook-correlated supplemental content that teachers can customize for individual students. Classwell CEO Dave Cappelucci sees this as the first step in an evolving model. "Initially we see ourselves as a supplemental resource to print textbooks, but we're watching to see how access and Internet speeds increase, and how teacher behavior changes over time," he says. "Print will always be around, but instead of an 800-page book, we might see a 200-page book of core material with a Web-based component that's more customizable."
Not Just Textbooks
While textbook companies are testing the model, there is other content that educators can now experiment with using in class. Classic literature, from Shakespeare to Poe, can be downloaded for free through online collections such as the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center and Project Gutenberg, an e-text archive dating back to 1971. And, of course, there are plenty of commercial companies-MediaSeek, Riverdeep Interactive, and Classroom Connect, to name a few-that offer a Web-based curriculum aligned to state and local standards.
Library automation companies are also looking into models for delivering e-books to school libraries. Follett Software got a running start through a partnership with netLibrary that allows Follett users to preview e-books for free. Media specialists (or other authorized staff) can then purchase them for the school's collection.
In many ways, teachers themselves remain the most powerful publishers of tech-delivered classroom materials. "If you search the Web for fifth-grade science modules, you can find tons. Although some is available from established media providers, most of what you find has been created by teachers, not companies," says Walusis. One of the priorities of the Resurrection School pilot, he adds, was for teachers to become self-publishers-to create a depository of digitized lessons, worksheets, and tests that could be disseminated to students and, ultimately, to other educators. Rick Robb agrees with this philosophy. "Technology is environmental. It doesn't have to be a lesson plan," he says. "Just give us access-we'll do the rest."
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