Week One

Digital Textbooks

A Toronto District School Board Trustee discusses supplementing textbooks with digital content.

A Toronto School District is thinking about making to switch to digital textbooks. The school districts Superintendent say's that they will save about $50 millions every 10 years if they go digital. Right now the entire Toronto school district is on a book rotation and they rotate new books in every three years and it costs up to $20 million each time!

Pros and Cons for going digital


Pros: 

• More then half of the textbooks are out dated and if they went digital they would be able to have up to date, current information
• Save over $50 million over 10 years
• Students could access the digital textbooks from their cell phone, iPad, or computers
• Students wouldn't to carry around so much weight and put stress on their shoulders and back
• Some students can not take home textbooks because either the school has a  shortage or they can not afford them personally 

Cons:

• How do you gather all the kind of information and own the rights?
• How do you make it safe and secure for the instructors and students?
• Not everyone can afford a cell phone with internet, an iPad or computer. 
• Will all the money that the school would save, would they provide the students with those devices?

There is a lot to think about and I think they need to get with the authors and book companies and come up with a plan to make this work. I think it would be great. I mean everything else is just a click away why not our text books? And what about Google books? It can be done and I think it will be done soon!


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