School District Dumps $2 Million 'Online Textbook' Program After Discovering Some Students Can't Afford Broadband
from the 'you-must-have-the-latest-version-of-flash-installed-before-learning...' dept
The Digital Reader recently posted an article detailing a Virginia school district's problems with digital textbooks. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is making the switch back to paper textbooks, to the tune of $2 million, after running into system requirements that prevented some of its students from taking advantage of the digital books.According to the Washington Post (and confirmed on an official website) Fairfax County Public Schools is currently in the process of replacing some recently licensed math textbooks with even newer paper copies.
FCPS has always been at the forefront of adopting new tech in classrooms, whether it is setting up 1:1 classrooms or pushing for greater participation in BYOD programs, and this school year they decided to go into digital textbooks in a big way. FCPS signed up 3 publishers, Pearson, Holt, and McGraw/Hill to provide online math textbooks for all students in all grades, K-12.
That’s an ambitious project, no? It would save students the effort of carrying the textbooks around while avoiding the need for expensive hardware like the iPad. I mean, almost everyone has a computer with internet access at home right?
Well, no, they don’t. And even for the ones that do have access, it turns out that is not enough.The underlying problem here isn't an ill-timed leap into the digital world. It's the limits built into the e-textbooks by the publishers. In fact, FCPS's FAQ on the digital textbooks calls them what they really are: "online textbooks." Even if schools could purchase cheaper e-readers for students lacking access to broadband or a computer, the publishers are, at this point, unwilling to provide a downloadable option. In fact, the textbook publishers are constantly adding additional bells and whistles to their "online textbooks" (note the long list of additional software needed to use the curriculum) in order to avoid ever having to provide a stripped-down, downloadable version. Here are the system requirements for the "online textbooks" used by FCPS [PDF]:
So, the issue here isn't so much that FCPS made the mistake moving forward with digital textbooks, leaving some students out in the cold, but that Pearson and other publishers are unwilling to relinquish complete control of their digital offerings. This is what's keeping the situation from being more equitable. Offline options would remove the broadband requirement, and offering downloadable versions for e-readers would eliminate a large part of the technology gap. Hoffelder's underlying point that "education is supposed to be the great equalizer" is true, but the publishers' "online textbooks" are doing more to keep this gap from closing than this school district's pursuit of the next, newest thing.
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Filed Under: broadband, digital textbooks, fairfax county, keeping up, virginia
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IP must be protected
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Profits
Also if the publisher gets in financial difficulties they have a huge lever over the schools and government, bail us out or the textbooks disappear mid way th
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Re: IP must be protected
Yeah, way to promote piracy!
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It's hard not to view the current publishers as leeches.
Why not simply pay for internet connections for students who can't afford it? Sure would be cheaper.
This is a step in the right direction...
http://www.opensourcetext.org/
It's hard not to view the current publishers as leeches.
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Rabid right wingers crack me up.
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Here's a solution...
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The more I think about this...
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Seems doable
WHAT DO YOU MEAN FEDERAL INVESTIGATION FOR COMPUTER FRAUD AND HACKING?
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Re: Seems doable
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Re: The more I think about this...
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Re: Here's a solution...
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Re: Seems doable
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Re: Re: Here's a solution...
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Serial modem
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Sounds like a new Kickstarter program to me
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Re: IP must be protected
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Re: Serial modem
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Re: Re: Re: Here's a solution...
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Re: IP must be protected
Pearson is *the* worst dinosaur of a company when it comes to online anything. Not only that, but they put little to no effort into their online classes, which basically use an iframe to display the entire book which you buy, as a pdf. Supplemental materials = an easy way for teachers to give people busywork. There's no actual value. Oh, and did I mention it requires you install quicktime and use firefox/IE, but their javascript will check to make sure you're not using chrome? Yep. They're *that* bad.
Never again will I ever take a class if it's online and includes pearson.
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But one has to wonder
In these instances, the best leverage to change is for no school to buy into such ridiculous deals.
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SD cards
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Re: Sounds like a new Kickstarter program to me
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Re: Profits
There was an outage on the text-book's servers. No school today kids!
The other scary part is that the text-book companies have been dinosaurs for 50 years already. I can't see any story like this without thinking of Richard Feynman
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
Not exactly the same situation, but I'm sure some equally shady practices go on to this day concerning how books or systems are put in place.
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Look at those additional requirements!
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind: those were made requirements for the sole purpose of keeping unwanted people out. There's probably a few diehards out there still doing things with Shockwave, but NOBODY uses QuickTime anymore.
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FTFY
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FTFY
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But Professor...
Also what happens when the internet goes out?
"There was a DDOS attack on Verizon and I could not login to do my homework"
"My Dish internet reached its limit because we had to download updates for windows this month. Maybe I can do my homework next month"
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Re: Re: IP must be protected
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The other issue I had with this system is that parents can either be naive, incapable, or aren't involved enough to provide a locked down computer. If you think putting a child in front of a broadband connected computer without supervision is a productive use of their time, then your child is very disciplined.
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Re: Re: Serial modem
The district should find out if 100K is enough for the textbooks to work.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Here's a solution...
And your point is correct, although your aim missed. People did trust the schools, and only in hindsight realize they shouldn't have. The point of being able to 'fix' the problem with tape does not coincide with your point of trusting the school.
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Re: Seems doable
The point mentioned in this article is that they are intent on adding more features than just text. Perhaps now the 'textbook' can automatically flag those student who didn't do their homework online.
"getting at least the text" is not a solution.
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Re: Look at those additional requirements!
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Following the web trail from the links, there is a video for at least one online maths 'textbook' from this school board at http://www.brainshark.com/pearsonschool/vu?pi=zH0zP0L5jz1seuz0&intk=407843770 It gives a feel for what the school board use their online teaching system for.
From this, you'll see that what the school board calls an online textbook is really a module of material within Blackboard, which is a very popular Virtual Learning Environment. The video explains how to log on to Blackboard and even shows the URL with the name 'blackboard' in it (slide 2, at about 28 seconds).
A VLE isn't just about presenting material in a different format to a book; it's a way of attempting to replicate some significant parts of the whole teaching experience - feedback, demonstrations, interactivity etc. If you want to see what a 'textbook' in this system is intended to do, have a look at slide 3 of the video. Going by these, it's certainly not intended to do anything static.
With a VLE there are also areas for student communication with staff, staff feedback to students, areas for students to submit assignments and to get grades, and a host of other features. You can even check whether students are engaging with a class by how often they've logged on and which pages of material they've accessed - this can help diagnose where students have problems. I assume that's one of the reasons for embedding this particular teaching material within Blackboard.
As such it would require a full client-server system. That isn't something you can strip the DRM from and download to an e-reader!
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http://www.opensourcetext.org/
http://www.opentextbook.org/
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As far as "added features" I think that's great, let that be their toehold against piracy. "You'd see an awesome diagram of the Endocrine system here if you opened the chapter from our website!" But I don't think it's much of an excuse for not providing a less fancy off-line version of the text and questions for kids to use at home. DRM and piracy paranoia harming paying users and hindering the uptake of new tools. That's a theme I'd love to see a lot less of.
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Re: IP must be protected
they end up buying 'new' books virtually EVERY year because the 'old' ones are 'outdated' (meaning they have moved some chapters around, and rearranged stuff so that the old exercise books are no longer applicable)...
IT IS A FUCKING SCAM ! ! !
not only that, they are not ALLOWED to use 'old' books, EVEN IF THEY ARE OKAY FOR THEIR purposes... oh, and do i mention the warehouses full of crap that gets bought but never distributed ? ? ?
ANOTHER 'legalized' -yet immoral- scam to fleece the powerless...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Re: IP must be protected
...wait, horry crap, these people are being trusted to educate the children??
This is EXACTLY the kind of shit that's going to lead space aliens to decide to invade and destroy us and take over our planet--out of sheer compassion.
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Re: IP must be protected
Wait... that sounds familiar...
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Re: IP must be protected - Lessons learned
Years later when I graduated from High School, I went back to my elementary school to apologize to the school librarian. When I told him that I and another student had stolen dictionaries (yeah I ratted out my bro), the librarian told me that he knew we had stolen the dictionaries. I was puzzled as to why he didn't say anything, so I asked why. He said that we were stealing dictionaries and there was only one reason a child would do that, to use it. He said it was hard enough to get children to use the dictionaries while in the school, so there was no way he was going to stop children from using them at home.
Teaching job well done.
The point of the story is that publishers' goals go against the goals of the teachers. The whole point of education is to share as much knowledge as possible. Publishers seem to be pushing for a complete shift to free online lessons like at khan academy.
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Re: Re: Re: Profits
I had a prof. The guy was excellent. I saw his lecture notes once, and any time he saw students struggling with a concept, he'd annotate his lecture notes for the next year. The man actually cared about teaching his students.
Unfortunately for him, the university let him go because he didn't publish anything - because he was too busy trying to do his job as a professor. A damn shame, really, and the reason why I shred every single request piece of Alumni mail that comes from them.
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Very easy to implement a timed license
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Re: SD cards
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Re: IP must be protected
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Wireless Sync?
Not that hard, people. Just get near the school so the device can pick up the WiFi signal and have it update itself with the new information.
If you're scared if the content might leak out to the Internet, utilize the TPM chip inside some computers to secure the information to that particular system.
..and if it's a digital textbook and you are attending school, it should update itself without issues. I know most tablets and e-readers have digital serial numbers built into the hardware and/or software. Just have the encryption certificates expire every Monday (or whenever) and renew.
People are making this more complicated than it has to be.
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Very easy to implement a timed license
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Don't blame publishers, blame textbooks
The real problem here is that adding e- to textbooks just adds dazzle and complexity to an already broken model—a learning model, a development model and a purchasing model. They are solutions in search of a rich problem.
If I had my druthers, schools would ditch these programs altogether. Good teachers don't need textbooks. Of course, you need to hire good teachers first, and that takes money—more money, even, than the bullshit e-textbooks.
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"Why the hell would you trust sending your kids to a school if you thought the officials would even consider such a thing?" We send our kids to school because the government will take them away from us if we don't, and send them to live with the Jukes's and the Kallikaks. And we send them to the school that they are assigned to, because there is no school choice. And I agree that the chances are very slim that my school will have people like that with access to the computers, but we should not assume things will be OK when we have no way to know until afterwards. I like your idea of disabling the camera, although it's too bad we have to even think about that.
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Limitations of digital textbooks
There's a reason why countries like Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China stay at the top for math/science as well as many other academics. They use physical textbooks, and succeed with them. Why? Because humans brains are made to be visual learners, and when you can circle, box, highlight, and notate in your physical copies, that multiplies your ability to retain and remember so much more information. Online textbook format, then, can be helpful as a supplement, not as a replacement.
I am simply glad to hear that textbooks are coming back.
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