“Fresno Unified school trustees on Wednesday approved the agreement that will place iPads into the hands of 100 students at Kings Canyon and Sequoia middle schools. They will join 300 students in Long Beach, Riverside and San Francisco school districts who will also trade textbooks for iPads,” Correa reports. “‘This is going to sound fairly cool, because it is,’ said Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson.”
“Hanson said the new program provides an opportunity for California schools to take the lead in digital textbook innovation,” Correa reports. “Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the education publishing company that created the program, is working with Apple — the iPad’s manufacturer — and is subsidizing the pilot program. The students will get iPads in the next few days and will be allowed to take the portable computers home. John Sipe, vice president of K-12 sales for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said the iPad app essentially replaces the 800-page algebra book that students would normally use.”
Correa reports, “At the conclusion of the yearlong pilot, Empirical Education, a Silicon Valley research company, will evaluate student academic performance and produce a report comparing the 400 iPad app students to 600 other eighth-graders in California who relied solely on textbooks.
Read more in the full article here.
iPad is the best device students can use to do nites or other great things.
My friend, writer Paul Hewitt, whose Conceptual Physics textbook is used in 75% of Colleges, is considering an iPad version of his highly popular publication.
Considering it as long as I’m encouraging it, that is..
.:.
i thought california was broke?? and they can afford this many iPads.
Beginning of the end of paper textbooks.
Their ‘backpack’ weight will go from 30 lbs to 2 lbs., plus they’ll enjoy studying.
Finally, we won’t have to live under the tyranny of backwards thinking Texas school boards.
College paper text books can cost $50-70 each. Then every year the publisher changes the font size or book cover and force next year’s students to buy the brand new edition. There is no way they can charge a digital book for $50 bucks. Hopefully this will help the higher ed students with their budget.
Yeah I know, more beer money…
@umm
Do you know what it costs to print and distribute textbooks? If the iPad works, it will ultimately reduce the cost of learning materials.
…I mean this trend…
Kings Canyon and Sequoia: two supremely beautiful locations. It would be great to be a kid growing up there (although they probably do not realize how lucky they are).
This is all great. The one thing though, is to balance the level of interactivity with more static content, assuming there is interactivity in this. If our children don’t learn to form their own mental images of things on their own, it may hurt their development. More research is needed.
“More research is needed”
Isn’t that what this program is?
hope Texas History V2.0 isn’t an in app purchase.
@ ummm–
This program is being subsidized by the textbook company.
Any real costs that they incur, will be offset in savings from not having to buy the print version.
I hope they have a rather large amount of money set aside for repairs & replacement. Giving 8th grades a iPad to keep and take home is foolish and a waste of money. Keep them in the school and make sure they invest in heavy duty cases. From my experience kid don’t take of things they don’t own.
iWill,
All he has to do is convince the publisher to allow him to convert it to ePub. It’s very easy to do barring any page format issues.
Good start. Now let’s get rid of Algebra altogether. Learn it in college if you want to. For the 99% of us that had to suffer through and never used it once in our entire lived – thanks idiotic school board members.
Apple should develop an iPad built for students. Meaning it can with stand a harsh beating. Those students and families are going to kick the crap out of the iPad. Broken screens, dropped devices, and general ware and tear are going to make this a very expensive experiment for this company.
@Hi
In the end, while it will depend more the nature of each individual student than anything else, but I doubt a balance between static and interactive content will be that important.
Of course I’m talking about true interactive content… where participatory action on the part of the student is required, not mindless watching of linear video presentations.
My view is that it is interactive content (done correctly, of course) that will help students learn better because it is experiential. With interactivity students will better by doing, whereas with static content learning tends to be dominated by rote memorization.
I’m not slamming memorization, but it’s not the best way to learn.. And another thing is that studies have shown that conceptualized thinking improves memory retention.
Interactivity can provide students with greater understanding of the concepts behind what they learn, and more so than they could get by forming mental images… images that could have conceptual errors.
If college students have an iPad, not only can they save money on digital text books but they can get the Beer App and save money on beer.
Wait, digital beer is not near as good as the real thing. Of course, digital hangovers are a lot easier to live with.
I’m working on my second Masters now, and most of the textbooks still have to be downloaded in the Kindle app, not the iBook store. It will catch up soon though. Probably by my next class in Nov or Feb.
“I thought california was broke?? and they can afford this many iPads.”
This is a joke. Too many management people. In my little village there are over 60 cars at the grade school in the parking lot every day. There are less than 600 students. You work it out.
When I was in school, it was scandalous if we traded our bologna for PB&J…
“You work it out.”
I would if I could, but I can’t. I am a product of California public schools.
I teach in the California State University system and let me assure you we seem to be a far way off from replacing the paper textbooks. It is very frustrating because the greatest obstacle is actually the publishers.
Most of the major publishers sent me desk copies of the texts I evaluate and hopefully adopt for the courses I teach. Of course, the logic is that if they can persuade the professor with free copies, s/he will adopt and students will buy.
Since I use and iPad, I have been asking the publishers if they can send me e-copies instead. Most of them don’t want to do that. And those who do use a “rental” protocol where the text is only good for six months and then it becomes deactivated. Further, I’ve noticed that whereas a print copy of one of the texts may cost $140, an e-copy often costs $90 – FOR A SIX MONTH RENTAL. My students don’t go for it. It simply doesn’t make sense.
I wish I could have most of the texts I use in e-format, but for purchase. But I think any such plans now amounts to wishful thinking.