The Tipping Point: Texas Textbook Politics Meets the Digital Revolution The Texas Tribune:
"Under new legislation, school districts for the first time can spend a portion of state “book” money on computer hardware and digital content. And the state can stockpile and open-source electronic material, made available free to all schools. Some, including State Board of Education members, fear the explosion of choice will produce an erosion of quality content.
AUSTIN – In a historic shift, Texas public schools will soon start tapping the state’s multi-billion-dollar textbook fund for laptops and e-readers. A “book,” meanwhile, could become a living reservoir of content, freely edited and updated by educators and beamed to the classrooms, homes and handhelds of students statewide."
Rather than replacing untold thousands of dead-tree editions every two years — for hundreds of millions of dollars — the state could own libraries of electronic content, some of which it might even get for free. Students could carry all that material on a laptop or an e-reader, amassing an on-demand virtual library over multiple years in school.
That scenario represents the ideal — to some, at least — and may yet be years away. The changes thus far have come slowly, navigating a thicket of big-money politics and curriculum wars surrounding the nation’s second biggest textbook market. At the core of the new order, resulting from new legislation, lie three fundamental transfers of power and money:
"Under new legislation, school districts for the first time can spend a portion of state “book” money on computer hardware and digital content. And the state can stockpile and open-source electronic material, made available free to all schools. Some, including State Board of Education members, fear the explosion of choice will produce an erosion of quality content.
AUSTIN – In a historic shift, Texas public schools will soon start tapping the state’s multi-billion-dollar textbook fund for laptops and e-readers. A “book,” meanwhile, could become a living reservoir of content, freely edited and updated by educators and beamed to the classrooms, homes and handhelds of students statewide."
Rather than replacing untold thousands of dead-tree editions every two years — for hundreds of millions of dollars — the state could own libraries of electronic content, some of which it might even get for free. Students could carry all that material on a laptop or an e-reader, amassing an on-demand virtual library over multiple years in school.
That scenario represents the ideal — to some, at least — and may yet be years away. The changes thus far have come slowly, navigating a thicket of big-money politics and curriculum wars surrounding the nation’s second biggest textbook market. At the core of the new order, resulting from new legislation, lie three fundamental transfers of power and money: