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INTRODUCTION
Not long ago, headlines around the country proclaimed that the chairman of
the Texas State Board of Education was proposing the state stop buying textbooks and lease laptop computers for all students instead. As you might imagine, the ensuing debate has been fierce and long-lasting. Texas has not yet followed through on the plan, but the proposal served to focus public attention on
the multimillion dollar issue of how significant a role new communications
technologies should play in the schools of the twenty-first century.
Of course, in some ways the Texas proposal was a logical extension of what
has been happening in schools during the past few years. School districts
nationwide are scrambling to keep up with rapid advances in technology.
Schools are buying and installing scores of computers for their labs and classrooms. They are purchasing thousands of dollars worth of software for their students and teachers. Districts are rapidly wiring all school buildings with computer networks that connect to the Internet. For more than a decade there have been
demonstration and research projects in which students and teachers have been
given computers for long periods of time. However, the Texas proposal was the
first to suggest that computerization of educational resources be tried on such a
large scale. Then again, as any Texan will tell you, everything’s bigger in Texas.
Can Schools Afford It?
This proposal raises questions about how instructional technology might be
adopted wholesale by schools on a widespread basis. All kinds of different
issues are involved: financial, educational, social, logistical, and so on. Jack
Christie, the chair of the Texas school board, has made two major arguments in
favor of his proposal, one based on financial considerations and the other from
an educational perspective.
First, let’s look at the financial situation. According to news reports, Texas,
which buys school textbooks on a statewide basis, is likely to spend about $1.8 billion on textbooks over the next six years. Even so, they have a difficult time keeping these books current, in terms of both the information provided and the teaching strategies suggested. A recent study indicated that Texas spends about $30 per
student per year on technology and about $450 per student per year on books.
Clearly, $30 a year is not enough to buy a computer for a student. That is why
the proposal is to replace books with laptop computers. Apparently there are
computer companies willing to lease computers to the state for about $500 a student a year. After some period of time, the state would own the computers. These
computers would be loaded with basic software, including word processing; a
Web browser; and so on. Thus, if we are just talking about the hardware, the cost
per pupil for renting laptops is similar to the cost of purchasing textbooks.
But what about the costs of the digital versions of the textbook materials?
How will their costs compare with those of comparable printed materials? One
direct comparison we can already make is between digital and hard copy forms
of the standard encyclopedia. Although a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Bri-
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tannica in book form can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, a two CD-ROM
set with the same material can be had for under $150. Other reference material
can be similarly discounted when it is provided in CD form. This cost disparity
between electronic text and printed text is likely to increase in the coming
years, for economic trends favor electronic text. With the paper shortage, the
cost of bound hard copy materials continues to increase. On the other hand,
costs for the amount of information you can store in microchips and on magnetic disk drives continues to plummet, as the capacity of these digital storage
devices grows exponentially each year (see the discussion of “Moore’s Law” in
the introductory chapter entitled “From Video to Virtual Reality: Technology
and Its Instructional Potential”). Consequently, we should witness an ongoing
shift from hard copy print to digital storage of text.
Furthermore, new developments in optical disc technology have provided
the potential to carry far more digital information on compact disc than previously possible, at potentially even lower prices per page of text. The Digital Video
Disk (DVD) compact disc format stores about twelve times as much data as a CDROM (and may have largely replaced it by the time you read this). The costs of
text on DVD will be cheaper than the already economical expense of text on CDROM. DVD will allow enormous quantities of text information to be stored on a
single disk. One DVD disk will hold many textbooks. It could easily provide all
of the reading material that children have today in all of their textbooks assigned
for courses at several grade levels and still have room for related audio and video
materials, which printed texts are incapable of providing.
Many publishing companies, including textbook publishers, are coming to
see that they are in the business of selling information, not books. They are
already beginning to market this information more extensively in new media
formats. Many large publishers provide supplementary materials for important
texts on compact disc or videotape. As already mentioned, entire encyclopedias
have been available for some time on CD, and more books are likely to appear
in this format, as portable computers with CD players become more widely
available. In addition, publishers are starting to work out arrangements whereby institutions and individuals can buy just the information they want and need
over the World Wide Web. Both the buyers and the sellers then save because the
information can be downloaded directly without incurring the cost of printing,
binding, and so on.
All in all, even though the details are not yet clear, the idea of replacing
textbooks with computers could ultimately work from a financial standpoint,
especially given the rate at which the costs of digital storage of information
continues to drop each year. The main problem with going to computerized
text is that even if the cost of providing information in digital form is much
cheaper than providing it on hard copy, the cost of the equipment it takes to
access that digital information remains a significant additional expense. The
costs of microcomputer processors and memory chips is dropping rapidly,
however, so the digital “reader” of the future may be quite reasonably priced.
Nevertheless, it may be many years before the costs of providing digital text
actually become comparable to those of printed texts.
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The Book As an Instructional Medium
The next question is whether there are pedagogical advantages to shifting from
books to digital text. Even if digital information is more expensive, if it is more
instructionally effective, the additional cost might be justified. Digital text
might still be more cost-effective, in terms of educational gains. Let’s examine
this critical issue, by comparing the advantages and disadvantages associated
with the use of both textbooks and the new digital information sources.
It is important to recognize that, although the textbook has been the key
educational medium for quite a long time, it is not necessarily the best one.
Hundreds of years ago, when colleges and universities first came into being,
the primary means of transferring information from professor to student was
the lecture, not the textbook. The reason for this was not because all professors
were spellbinding public speakers. The problem was that books were simply
too expensive for most students. The lecture was much more cost-effective. But
after the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century, books became less
expensive, and ordinary people could own and read them. Nowadays, we take
them for granted, with cheap paperbacks available in supermarkets, book
superstores, and airport shops. In literate societies, books are everywhere, and
they are cheap enough, even at current textbook prices, to be easily usable as a
primary source of information for instruction. Even so, the advent of the ubiquitous textbook is a relatively recent development.
Books, even textbooks, have some distinct advantages as instructional technologies. They are inexpensive in comparison to other media materials, including computer software titles and video programming. They do not require
expensive and vulnerable equipment for operation. Books can contain large
amounts of high-quality information, which includes not just the text itself but
full-color graphics and photographs that have higher resolution and better
color fidelity than almost anything you will see in a video or on a computer
screen. They are highly portable devices and can be used almost anywhere with
enough light to read by. In general, the type and background of the pages are
easy on the eyes, and in fact some research indicates that people can read significantly faster from the printed page than from a computer screen. Books
allow for random search, especially when carefully indexed. Accessing digital
material can involve equipment-related delays: the computer may need to be
turned on, it may take some time to locate the particular file, and so on. Books
can be used at the learner’s own pace. They are time-consuming and expensive
to copy on one’s own, which publishers like, since this tends to limit illegal
copying. Books can survive at least some environments that electronic equipment would fail in, but at the same time, since books are inexpensive compared
with pieces of electronic equipment, they are easy to replace if they are damaged. All in all, books are a pretty good deal.
However, books have disadvantages, too. In many fields, as the information changes rapidly, it is difficult for textbook publishers to produce up-todate editions quickly enough to avoid obsolescence. Even if they do, school districts may not be able to afford to replace their versions with the new editions
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very often. We have recently seen books in use in schools that did not include
information about critical events such as the first moon landing or the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Also, in spite of the large amounts of text, graphics, and
photographs possible in books (and in spite of its potentially high quality),
books cannot present moving visuals or interact well with students. Those
characteristics have to be supplied by other media. It is much easier to quickly
find specific material using a computerized search of electronic text than it is to
flip through the pages of a book. Add to that the fact that the cost of books is rising while the cost of electronic media is falling, and we see that books are rapidly losing some of their advantages.
Advantages of Electronic Text
Let’s examine in more detail the advantages that electronic text might provide.
Computerized searches of electronic text allow students to research topics more
efficiently and effectively than is possible with hard copy text. While the table
of contents and an index can help readers find material in a book, these
research aids are quite limited compared with the advanced search techniques
available with most electronic text. Researchers can find all instances of a given
word or phrase in an electronic text. They can find material on a given topic in
electronic texts that have been classified according to topic. In addition, searches can be refined by combining several topics with descriptors like “and” or
“near,” which only find instances within the body of information that include
all of the terms entered. Thus, users can conduct relatively sophisticated
searches that zero in on precisely the information they are looking for.
To make electronic text fully searchable in these ways, specialists must classify material and label it with subject descriptors. This process will increase the
costs of electronic text. Producers of electronic textbook materials will need to
decide whether these costs are justified by the added functionality provided.
Certainly, most libraries have moved to electronic catalogs. Major databases,
such as the ERIC database of educational materials, are searchable in this way.
Electronic encyclopedias also provide computerized search capabilities. As students learn the skills of searching for and evaluating online information, they
will find it easier, faster, more complete, and more accurate to do so. These
skills are important for today’s professionals, and schools that hope to best prepare their students for the workplace may want to consider this significant
advantage of electronic text over printed material.
Electronic materials have another potentially significant advantage over
printed materials. They can provide audio and video materials, which may significantly enliven the educational experience. In addition to being motivational
for the student, these digital multimedia resources can enhance instruction in
ways that textbooks will never be capable of. Audio resources can help teach
music, drama, foreign language, and other subjects where the spoken word or
music is important. Video clips can enhance instruction in most all subject areas
by providing demonstrations, dramatizations, historical experiences, and other
visual displays.
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Incorporating these multimedia resources into electronic educational materials can be expensive, however. Although some of this material is available for
free in what is known as the “public domain,” in most cases available audiovisual material is copyrighted, and the rights to it can be quite expensive. An
alternative approach is to produce new materials, but this can also become costly. Publishers who wish to enhance electronic educational materials with multimedia clips will need to decide how much of this material they can afford and
whether these multimedia resources will significantly enhance the sales potential of the work.
Another potential advantage of electronic materials are the links that can be
programmed to take the reader to related materials. So-called hypertext, or
hypermedia in the case of multimedia resources, can automatically transfer students elsewhere in the work, if they wish to connect to other resources on that
topic. The hypermediated learning environment allows learners to explore topics easily and efficiently. If the links are sensibly conceived, the student can benefit significantly by being linked to additional worthwhile information on a
topic.
Some costs are associated with programming hyperlinks into text materials. Incorporating hyperlinks may raise the costs of these materials somewhat.
But the other potential disadvantage of adding hyperlinks is that students may
follow them blindly and fail to learn the material on the pages where they started. The relatively unstructured learning experience of moving from link to link
may not be as educationally sound as following a structured, organized linear
set of materials that moves from simple to more complex topics in a given subject area. Weaker students, in particular, may fail to learn effectively in a hypertext environment, since they may choose their links unwisely, fail to return
from where they linked to, and have difficulty making sense of the material if it
is not carefully structured for them.
In Texas, another argument in favor of the “laptops for textbooks” proposal has been the issue of keeping educational materials current. No state or district can afford to replace all their textbooks every year or even every few years.
Over time, the books become outdated. History textbooks sometimes name the
wrong person as president, provide erroneous maps, or fail to mention important current events. Science texts do not include the latest research in key areas.
Math books fail to reflect the most current approaches to teaching that subject.
When this happens, eventually the only choice is to replace the entire book,
even though much of it might still be accurate.
Electronic information is more easily and inexpensively modified than printed text. This is especially true for material online. Thus, students would have
access to the most recent news stories, as well as extensive background information in their social studies classes. Math students might receive problem sets
based on the latest research on teaching math. Science students not only can see
the latest research from the universities but also can be actively involved in gathering and analyzing data as well. In timeliness, there is no contest.
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Compact Discs or Networking?
As previously mentioned, right now electronic materials can be distributed to
students who have their own laptop computers in two basic ways. Students can
be given a compact disc containing all the information needed for a particular
course of study (or for all the subjects taken in a given school year). The other
distribution system is online. Students can connect their laptops to course
materials at a website and download what they need when they need it.
Instructionally there should be only minor differences between the two distribution systems. Both support digital materials that are easily searchable,
hyperlinked, and contain multimedia resources. Memory-intensive multimedia
resources like video might be more efficiently run off a CD, especially if the student’s Web connection is slow. On the other hand, hyperlinks on an online system might more easily connect to the vast resources of the World Wide Web.
But even these generalizations depend on various factors. A robust Web connection, like a cable modem, might provide efficient access to video clips.
Hypertext material on a compact disc can be programmed to access websites
and will readily do so if the computer running the CD is connected to the Web.
Which of these two approaches is more reliable? Having a CD might more
effectively guarantee ongoing access to information, anywhere and anytime.
An online system depends upon the availability and reliability of connections.
Few schools have a Web connection for each student right now, nor will they in
the immediate future. Furthermore, not all students have Internet connections
available at home. Low-income students, in particular, might suffer if text
information were available to them only online, since their homes are less likely to have the necessary connections.
One solution to these networking limitations is to download networkprovided materials onto high-density magnetic storage devices: hard drives, Zip
drives, Jaz drives, and so on. Then the material is both permanent and portable.
Children can take their text material home with them on their laptop machines
(plus whatever drive was necessary). Some materials might even be printed out
on paper, if need be (as in cases where student computers were lost or inoperable for a time). In fact, the “compact disc versus online delivery” debate might
eventually become less meaningful, when schools have their own recordable CD
units and can make their own copies. Online sources of information could easily
and inexpensively be downloaded and made available on CDs.
Which of these two delivery systems, CD or online, would be less expensive? Again, it is difficult to say. Compact discs involve the costs of pressing the
discs and shipping them. With online materials, however, one has to factor into
the overall equation the costs associated with establishing and maintaining the
networks needed to access the information and leasing the servers used to store
it. With either approach, the most significant costs would not be delivery-related
charges but would be associated with the development of the materials themselves, their marketing, company profits, and so on.
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Access to Other Electronic Resources
Of course, if students are given their own computers, they might take advantage of other resources apart from textbook materials. Students might obtain
and view on their machines scores of commercial CDs containing information
on various topics, including the aforementioned CD-ROM encyclopedias.
Another potential source of information is the vast amount of information on
the Web for free, which students could also access, assuming adequate networking capability.
This ability to get on the information superhighway is another potentially
huge advantage that the computer “notebooks for textbooks” plan might provide. The World Wide Web is fast becoming a huge repository of information—
some of it good, a lot of it half-baked at best. Nobody knows just how big the
Web is any more. It has been growing too fast and changes too quickly for that.
But millions of pages exist, far more than any of us can ever possibly examine.
Chances are, no matter what topics you are interested in, or are assigned to
study, you will be able to find something about them on the World Wide Web.
Many educational administrators see the availability of all this free information on the Web as an opportunity to keep the costs of educational materials
down. But few would suggest that the information on the Web be allowed to
replace textbook materials, since information must be appropriately selected,
organized, sequenced, and written with the target audience in mind. Although
much of the information in a given textbook would probably be available
somewhere on the Web, it would probably be in a variety of different locations
and it would be too difficult for students to track down on their own, in an
appropriate sequence.
In fact, the potential of the Web may be limited by the difficulty of finding
high-quality relevant material amid the huge glut of information. It is easy for
young people to lose their focus as they “surf the Web.” Web use in schools may
also be constrained by concerns that students will be accessing material that is
inappropriate for minors. Filtering systems are available, but they often operate
ineffectively, inadvertently screening out many inoffensive and worthwhile sites.
The vast resources of the World Wide Web might best be provided for students by teachers or curriculum specialists within a district who could develop
units that take advantage of Web-based materials. Although the Web materials
would be available for free, this process would incur some potentially significant costs associated with the time spent by professional educators to find these
materials and organize them into units. Well-planned use of Web resources
could enhance a school’s curriculum in exciting ways. The material could be
current and engaging in ways that textbooks seldom are. Chapter 2, “Surviving
the Information Explosion: Researching on the World Wide Web,” suggests
some ways for teachers to effectively use Web resources.
Providing laptops instead of textbooks could also afford other significant
educational benefits for school districts. If adequate networking capability
were available, students and teachers could take advantage of the enormous
instructional potential of computerized telecommunications: e-mail, listservs,
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electronic bulletin boards, and online projects. Communicating and collaborating with others can enhance educational experiences. Information about a topic
can be shared. Resources can be pooled. Related experiences can be discussed.
The perspectives of others from different cultures can be appreciated through
real exchanges. Chapter 16, “Conceptual Connections: Establishing Online
Learning Communities,” describes these opportunities for networking in more
detail.
Mere Replacement or Significant Shift?
To the extent that either traditional or new publishing companies work to
provide CDs and websites that can replace textbooks, we still have to ask
some key questions about them. Are they just the same old wine in new bottles? Do they add anything new and effective? Are they cost-effective? Using
new media to deliver the same content in the same way will not result in any
better or different learning. Instead, we need to look at what the new media
do especially well and take full advantage of those characteristics. Digital
resources can have more up-to-date information; can provide animation,
sound, and video; and are capable of interactive features like self-graded
tests or online discussions with other students. But can these capabilities significantly improve learning, and will those gains be significant enough to
justify any additional costs? Or would student learning be just as extensive
with well-written, effectively illustrated, up-to-date books? We are just
beginning to see some answers to these questions. The research is difficult to
do well and sometimes seems to support the preconceptions of whoever is
paying for it. However, over time, these answers will become central to the
debate.
Also critical to this debate will be the role played by the new digital technologies. The equipment is rapidly becoming more portable, more powerful,
and less expensive per byte of information stored and processed. The palmsized digital assistant is already widely used in the business world. Tiny,
portable, inexpensive digital devices may soon become the medium of choice
in education. In the near future, school districts may begin to use their textbook
budgets to order these kinds of devices. The proposed Texas plan to buy laptops for schools may become a cost-effective proposition sooner than we
thought possible.
RECOMMENDED READING
Kerin, J., and C. Frank. 1995. Beyond the textbook: Learner-powered multimedia. Technos 4 (4): 22–25.
Rockman, S., and M. Chessler. 1998, December. Laptop use shows increases in student
learning. Connection. Online:
www.microsoft.com/education/k12/articles/spedec98.htm.
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Texas schools may go to laptops. 1997, November. Online: CNET News.com,
www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,16630,00.html.
OTHER REFERENCES
Albion, P. 1998. Challenging the unquestioning rush towards adopting laptop programs in schools. Online:
www.qsite.edu.au/conference/qsite98/albion/albion.html.
Berry, D. 1997. Using electronic texts in the classroom. Multimedia Schools 4 (1): 22–27.
Conail-Engel, I. 1994. The school textbook—Can we now throw it away? Educational
Media International 31 (4): 250–252.
Healey, T. 1999. Notebook programs pave the way to student-centered learning. T.H.E.
Journal 26 (9): 14–17.
Hopkins, M., and J. Ittelson. 1994. Electronic publishing and core curricula. Educational
Technology 34 (7): 21–22.
Larson, T. 1995. Making an interactive calculus textbook. Journal of Interactive Instruction
Development 7 (3): 20–24.
Levy, M. 1997. Reading and writing linear and nonlinear texts: A comparison of technologies. On-Call 11 (2): 39–45.
Lyall, S. 1994. Are these books or what? CD-ROM and the literary industry. Technos 3
(4): 20–23.
Matthew, K. 1997. A comparison of the influence of interactive CD-ROM storybooks
and traditional print storybooks on reading comprehension. Journal of Research in
Computing in Education 29 (3): 263–275.
O’Keefe, S. 1995. Electric texts. Internet World 6 (10): 56–58.
Satran, A. 1994. New media educational products: The “digitizing straw into gold” fallacy. Educational Technology 34 (7): 23–25.
Siegel, M. A., and G. Sousa. 1994. Inventing the virtual textbook: Changing the nature
of schooling. Educational Technology 34 (7): 49–54.
Wright, A. 1993. Futures of the book: A preliminary history. Educational Resources, ERIC,
ED 375830.
SCENARIO
Your state has begun to explore the idea of replacing textbooks with portable
laptop computers for all students. Since your school district is one of the most
technologically advanced in the state, it is likely to be one of the first to experiment with this idea. Needless to say, the proposal is controversial, and few
politicians are going to back it without gathering a lot of information and garnering a lot of support. So far, as a beginning fifth-grade teacher, you are unsure
about where you stand on the issue. You haven’t had much time yet to explore
it in depth, but from what you’ve heard, both sides have made some interesting
points.
Your principal is an avid supporter of instructional technology and more
knowledgeable in this field than most school administrators. Today, he asked
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you to serve on a districtwide committee to examine this proposal and its
implications. Most districts are setting up such committees, which will report
on up the line to the state capital. You have been asked because your principal
wants both experienced and beginning teachers on the committee (and you are
definitely early in your career!). He has told you that your job is to keep an
open mind, to not be too bound by tradition, and to examine the evidence as
objectively as possible.
The first meeting of the committee is next week. You tried to explain to the
principal that you really didn’t know much about it, but he seemed unconcerned.
He suggested some basic readings, and he said that your job was to provide the
perspective of a beginning teacher and to think about how you might take
advantage of this change in your classroom. This won’t be easy. You will need to
think about both the curriculum and the applications of technology. The principal suggests that you start by gathering information to understand the pros and
cons. The decision won’t be made for some time, so you need to do some work.
First, your job is to put together all of the pros and cons you can think of for
the proposal: Should we use the textbook budget to buy computers instead? What
software will be needed? What will we gain by doing this? What will we lose?
Your second job is to decide which side of the issue you stand on and write a
brief for that position. (A “brief” is lawyer lingo for a document that lays out the
facts in a case and makes the best argument for your side.) In this brief, make the
best case you can for your point of view. You should also anticipate the major arguments on the other side and try to refute them.
ISSUES INQUIRY
1. Do you feel that the “laptops for textbooks” proposal has any merit? Why or why
not? What are the key issues in this debate?
2. Describe several ways in which electronic text materials differ from printed text
materials. Discuss the degree to which these features may (or may not) be instructionally advantageous.
3. Electronic text might be provided to schools in several ways. Compact discs could be
distributed. The material could be made available online. Perhaps a combination of
approaches might be most appropriate. Discuss how you feel digital information
might most effectively be delivered to schools.
4. One very dynamic use of student laptops might be online. Discuss some of the potential instructional benefits of the World Wide Web. As a teacher, would you consider
having students use Web materials instead of their textbooks or only as a supplement
to their textbooks?
5. If each pupil had a portable “digital assistant” to use in school, how significantly would
this change the educational experience? How radically might this equipment change the
ways students learn, the ways teachers teach, and the way the curriculum is structured?