<p>California</a> schoolbooks going digital by AFP: Yahoo! Tech</p>
<p>Discuss .</p>
<p>I think it’s a good idea</p>
<p>Yay! No more carrying around textbooks!
They should start a digital teacher initiative soon too. It would be cool if they had it like the Vulcans do in Star Trek.</p>
<p>I like.</p>
<p>I think the idea is good in principle, but there are a lot of complications. </p>
<ul>
<li>In what format will the digital books be distributed?<br></li>
<li>Will they replace all textbooks, just the ones that are taken home, or just the ones in class?<br></li>
<li>How long will they last in the hands of kids that really don’t give a ****?<br></li>
<li>Will this affect the range of choices teachers have for textbooks?</li>
<li>When they expand the subjects, will English teachers have all the novels they use be in digital format?</li>
<li>Will English teachers still be forced to “give out” useless textbooks?</li>
<li>Who will pay for all the new systems?</li>
</ul>
<p>Even if this is approved, I have a hard time seeing this become reality quickly. And it may not be approved because of the absolute deadlock in the CA congress. If this moved to the referendum system I would vote against it on principle.</p>
<p>yeah, wouldn’t they have to buy some sort of equipment in order for everyone to acess the textbooks? Unless it’s going to be on computers…but still, at my school at least, there aren’t nearly enough computers for everyone to be using.</p>
<p>Question: Does anyone actually use textbooks IN CLASS? I neeeeeever did… (I mean, maybe we were supposed to. I just didn’t.)</p>
<p>I used my ap bio book for the warm ups, other than that though no.</p>
<p>We used them sometimes, but they still <em>try</em> to buy enough books for every student plus class set for every teacher.</p>
<p>I like the feeling of actually carrying and touching a textbook.</p>
<p>Easy way for the textbook companies to stop us all from reselling (well I guess in high school the books aren’t yours anyway).</p>
<p>Having been to an online school for over a year… it is nice to have a solid textbook. It doesn’t matter for, say, English, but it is a real pain not to have a real textbook for math and Japanese.</p>
<p>
We always did in Latin. There’s no point in printing out a lot of other Latin stories when you have 70 in a book. We do in French, but that class sucks.</p>
<p>In my experience, technology introduced in schools is often not used to its full potential. I mean, projectors, sure. But smart boards and tablet lap tops for every student, usually not.</p>
<p>I’m a purist, so I hate the idea of digital textbooks or digital books of any kind. There’s an experience you get from reading a book that you can’t get from reading a screen. Kindles and these digital textbooks are going to ruin the idea of ‘reading’. You have to separate intellectual pursuits from Facebook somehow, you know?</p>
<p>^Absolutely agreed.</p>
<p>Uhg. I’d hate if my school went all digital. I like the internet and computers as much as the next person, but for studying and learning, the physical is much better for me.</p>
<p>you can’t highlight in a digital textbook</p>
<p>Yea, I agree with KMad, I like having tangible reading, no digital textbooks or anything. It feels so much better, I suppose I am a purist when it comes to that</p>
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<p>You “can’t” highlight in a book the school gives you, either. We actually got fined for doing it. Sometimes we’d have to buy a whole new book - $120.</p>
<p>I love this. I love this so much it makes me smile and feel all warm inside.</p>
<p>I hope this will be globally introduced before I graduate. That’s how much I love it. No, seriously.</p>
<p>Although it seems odd that there is no tangible, physical book there for you to read, you can do what a lot of students did when they hated lugging textbooks around; copy it. In this case, print it. Go to kinkos or something and get it done. Personally, in classrooms, I think a digital textbook is also better because I’m assuming you’d have a computer of some sort. eg. easier notes, do you know how hard it is for a left handed kid to write on a right handed desk with hand cramps T_T</p>