Digital Textbooks In California

A story on WBUR's Weekend Edition caught my attention with an alarming fact: the average public school text book costs $100. When is the last time you spent that much on a book? I don't think I have, ever - even in college. The fact was slipped into a story about California's recent vetting of digital text books for use in its public school system, a change that is hoped could save the state $200 million annually.

The story in Scientific American talks about the sources of the digital content reviewed. Collaboratively written content scored lower than content written by a single or select authors. Some submissions were approved for use, so it will be interesting to see how the digital content is used in real world classrooms. At $100/book, it could be cheaper to print out PDF content on 8.5x11 paper and hand it out to each student, which is a sad fact.

To me, the exciting part of this story is the rapid improvement of ebook readers. When ebook readers fall into the $100 price range, it would be insane to buy $100 text books when free PDF content for all the books a student needs could be loaded into a digital device.