No more textbooks?

Remember that poor 4-foot-tall boy who toppled over with the backpack that weighed as much as he did?  Well, it seems like we're approaching a time when he'll just have to bring his electronic reader to school.  Maybe a few folders, too.

Introducing the Amazon Kindle - a thin, lightweight, electronic reader that holds up to 1,500 books (3,500 for the DX version) in the palm of your hand.  We don't necessarily have to showcase the Kindle, really.  For the point at hand, any electronic reader will do (Amazon just happens to be the most obvious to use an example for price, use, etc.).  What becomes so fascinating however is the potential this could yield for the educational field.  At first glance this hand held device is a bit pricey at $259.  But we know this is temporary.  After all, just looking at the iPhone's initial release of $599 is laughable when comparing to today's Apple advertisement of a mere $99.  It's only a matter of time before technology becomes financially accessible to everyone and reaches critical mass market share.

Electronic readers will be no exception, and now that publishing companies are catching on so will schools.  Speaking about publishers, let's consider textbooks.  Consulting a few teachers, it was found that on average, a school buys a set of textbooks to last 8-10 years, and a textbook, depending on its subject, could vary between $65 and $90 a pop when buying in bulk.  Now we know our students take excellent care of these textbooks during the 9 months they borrow them, but every once in a while a student enjoys a textbook so very much that she decides to make personal notes in it or keep it and use it through college.  With publishers pumping out new editions of textbooks every other year, it becomes a bit frustrating when trying to order just a few textbooks to replenish your school's supply, only to find it has been discontinued from print.  There may be a few extra copies of this History textbook at the Texas used book depository...that is if you don't mind a chapter of history being Texas State history instead."

When an electronic reader decreases only $150 to an inevitable $99, a school could possibly begin integrating electronic readers into the curriculum, encouraging families to buy their students a reader that would last them their 4 years of high school.  Now, all that a school would have to put up front would be a minimal cost per site license of an e-textbook.  With everything being wireless, the school could control which students view which textbooks after registering each student's reader.  Whether or not this is all even possible right now, companies like CourseSmart are beginning to emerge that are on the right track.

Critics may argue that an electronic reader just can't compare to a true textbook, one where students can actually search through the pages, bookmark, look at multiple pages at the flip of a hand, etc.  True, this may affect studying in the traditional sense.  But how different is this to the development of printed works over oratory?  Or video over printed works?  Or MP3 over CD, even, a debate that still rages over fanatics clinging to their jewel cases and special-release booklets for dear life.  It's guaranteed, some little things will be lost in the transition, and not everyone will operate on e-documents everywhere, but it appears that society has time and time again voted for the more convenient over the traditional.

Like the teachers at Montgomery County where "each employee has a monthly limit of copies" or are being "urged to reconsider their paper-dependent ways," they can now look at an electronic reader and see the potential to distribute PDF worksheets to a student's hand held device.  Why not continue with this idea and flirt with teacher accessibility?  It doesn't seem too far away when students can submit their completed worksheets over a 3G network, and an instructor can take his 1/3 inch reader home to grade their students' papers instead of stacks upon stacks of paper-clipped and stapled packets of paper.  A teacher really could take his work wherever he goes, grading papers on the subway, on the plane, or even standing in line at the bank--all without the need to set up a home base of operations, papers scattered everywhere about him.  User friendliness and screen size to make it feasible to navigate through different textbooks and assignments would undoubtedly come with time.

I can see the advertising slogan now: "Heavy backpacks: Now a thing of the past!"

*Update* 6/3/2010 : The future has arrived!  Seen here in this article, one Florida school does exactly this!