California abandoning paper based books, getting e-frindly

When you really stop and think about a school system and how much money they spend and where (psh…who doesn’t think about that kind of stuff…), you may often find youself dumb founded on how costly and wasteful buying text books are. The markup is ridiculous and they only last a couple years at best. It is money wasted that can never be recovered. California is finally coming to there senses, mildly influenced by a god awful budget deficit to make the move to online text books. What are some of the benefits of this move to the digital frontier?

Obviously the most easily discernible and recognizable difference would be the money savings, particularly for the smaller communities that pay for their own books. For example, a school of roughly 10,000 students could save around $2 million per year just by moving to online textbooks alone. Great! Let’s dump paper completely, right? Hold on speedy. At first, the digital move is only going to comprise of books in the math and science realm (thicker?) with other subjects to I’m sure follow in the nearer future.

Some may see the headlines of digital textbooks and worry about the credibility or usefulness of digitized textbooks. Not to fear knowledge loving parents, all books have to be approved by the California Resource Learning Network before they can be adopted by the school system meaning no dumb dumbs here…(theoretically).

Another benefit is that textbooks (in California anyway) are on a six-year “approve cycle” meaning that quite a bit of information gets left out of text books. If you or your student is using a book 1-2 years from the end of it’s cycle, you are most certainly missing out on a bevy of current information. That is where online books can help. They can *potentially* have faster approve times as well as much quicker updates. Instead of having to reprint millions of text books, one person can edit one file with the changes instantly available to millions.

The move to online/digital textbooks is something that will eventually happen to ever student in ever school. It is just a matter of time. Are you excited for such a revelation? Is your back looking for an escape from 40 lbs. of dead tree strapped to your back 8-3 every day? This new initiative could be getting a boost thanks to California’s rather aggressive campaign. Whether you like it or not, paper based text books are on the way out. The trees thank you.

Source: Ars Technica, Image Source

Author: Mike Norris

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Gadget lover, smartphone collector, and beer connoisseur. I've been writing about gadgets for three years now and loving every minute of it. Outside of the digital landscape, I enjoy being active outdoors. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to drop me a line!