CK-12 Foundation dominates California e-textbook search
By Christopher Dawson | August 13, 2009, 10:30pm PDT
Summary: Last month, I wrote a post on the CK-12 Foundation and their free textbook initiatives. As I suggested then,
When some serious Silicon Valley heavyweights get together with Stanford academics and experienced K-12 educators to start producing high-quality, open content, chances are good that you’ll at least find a few neat ideas.
This week, the [...]
Last month, I wrote a post on the CK-12 Foundation and their free textbook initiatives. As I suggested then,
When some serious Silicon Valley heavyweights get together with Stanford academics and experienced K-12 educators to start producing high-quality, open content, chances are good that you’ll at least find a few neat ideas.
This week, the efforts of the Foundation seem to have paid off, as they provided electronic textbooks through a California initiative that were clearly more aligned with state standards than any electronic texts from major publishers. According to a report from the California government,
Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California’s standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards, including the CK-12 Foundation’s CK-12 Single Variable Calculus, CK-12 Trigonometry, CK-12 Chemistry and Dr. H. Jerome Keisler’s Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach.
This appears to be the first major evaluation at a state level of e-textbooks. As Governor Schwarzenegger noted,
“California’s Digital Textbook Initiative gives school districts high-quality, cost-effective options to consider when choosing textbooks for the classroom - not only during these difficult economic times but in the years to come.”
Again, quoting the press release,
In California, local high school districts are responsible for adopting standards-aligned textbooks for use in the classroom. This report helps districts identify the materials that best meet the needs of their students…The reviewed digital textbooks are available for schools to use this fall.
It remains to be seen how the major publishers will respond and whether they will be able to match what amounts to an open-source textbook approach that can so successfully address state standards and student educational needs.
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Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.
Disclosure
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.).
He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change.
He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have).
Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others.
Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair.
Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards.
Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap.
Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff.
Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable.
Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.
Biography
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider.
He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
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I love the idea, but the implementation at the CK-12 web site seems to have a ways to go. I tried looking at a couple of flexbooks and found that they first pop up a window that only uses about 50% of my screen space, then put a scrolling textbox in that so I'm down to reading the content in less than 25% of my available screen. The amount of scrolling necessary to read the content on-line is going to give me a headache as I'll spend more time refocusing than on reading.
While I get that the digital books can be kept updated to the minute, I still don't think they can save a school money. The reader or computer required to USE them will cost more in TCO than textbooks would ever cost, IMHO.
And I did forget to mention...this is California, they are bankrupt already. Brownouts galore? And they are pushing this idea?
sigh...
But I think the theory is that if you (a student) can download a text and read it at home the school doesn't have to provide a take home text (I think there was a lawsuit about this?) as well as the regular class set that stays in the room.
That could save oodles of $'s if there are computers that can read PDF's at home. However, if they're not available at home, then well... Who knows, maybe that's "a very small number" of people to whom they could provide the regular good old dead tree version for home use.
Take an average highschooler with 7 courses per year over four years and the cost of each textbook averaging $50, I think even having to purchase a kindle-like reader will be cost efficient. No carrying stacks of books, everything can be up-to-date, and it is greener to use one electronic reader than to print and ship all those books. Then add in the factor that if you make it a netbook or notebook instead of a reader you have put an even more powerful tool in each student's hands. Sounds like a good idea to me.
I love the idea, but the implementation at the CK-12 web site seems to have a ways to go. I tried looking at a couple of flexbooks and found that they first pop up a window that only uses about 50% of my screen space, then put a scrolling textbox in that so I'm down to reading the content in less than 25% of my available screen. The amount of scrolling necessary to read the content on-line is going to give me a headache as I'll spend more time refocusing than on reading.
