uh-oh. California drives the textbook industry. Say good-bye to tons of publishing jobs.
“the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100”
There’s a big problem, right there. Ain’t no free market in textbooks. No, sir.
What if they dont have electricity, how will they read the computer? do away with books, goodness. HMMMMM..
Oh boy. This will soon to lead to — E-Readers and iPods are causing an eyestrain on our children — we need more money to prevent eyestrain!
People will obviously make fun of this, but it does have merit.
A PDF file is cheaper than a book, easier to highlight, and you can cut/paste parts of it.
This is the kind of “out of the box” thinking Dems are always saying they will do to save money (but never do.) Would it be cheaper to provide students physical books, or an electronic reading device with the books installed on it? I don’t know about now, but someone will come up with a system that is cheaper than physical books.
It’s the 21st century for crying out loud, and students are still using the same study tools they did 100 years ago.
>>...the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100, whereas digital media can be distributed cheaply... <<
Neither here nor there, since a textbook doesn’t need to be replaced each year for each student. The ones I used in elementary school - and I grew up in a suburb that is still considered affluent - were used before I got them.
Haha. The textbook publishers will scream bloody murder. Never was there a more lucrative gig.
Ahnold needs to see a display of another digital technology..
Mcguffey reader + photocopier = PROBLEM SOLVED
California’s socialist experiment is the future of America.
- no longer be limited to a physical distribution chain
- couldn’t be lost, damaged, or destroyed in a material way
- could be kept forever as a reference text
- could be easily updated with new lessons and data
- easier on the budget
- sell those book depositories! Convert them to offices of warehouses for private business.
- make texts available to home-schools (not all texts are bad)
It’s not a terrible idea.
Can you imagine the logistics involved in keeping all the batteries charged in all the ereaders that all the schools in California would need?
What about simply the cost of replacement batteries and parts for all of them after the kids get a hold of them?
Something tells me that the overall cost of going to digital ereaders - including labor and maintinance personnel and techs to help get the files onto all those readers and keep them udated and free of viruses - will bankrupt more districts than books will.
hmmm... text books now cost $75-100 ea. let’s do the math. let’s say kids get, on average, 5 books per year. that would be 5 * 75 for 12 years or about $4,500
if you push a digital pad that can display the same items, but cost < $300, that would be a big savings.
give me an ipod touch like device that is 9”x5” or bigger, and that’d be cool. it could be used for all books, paper, email, distribution, etc
of course, they would have to have one per student. this could cost about $300 per student, but the student wouldn’t need more then 2 or 3 during the 12 years of school.
personally, i’d love one for myself. the function of the ipod touch is right on, but the size is wrong. they need to be bigger and allow for simplistic interface with a stylus of some kind so people can write/draw normally