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Counting the costs of a digital classroom
Apple's new iBooks 2 app is demonstrated for the media on an iPad at an event in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. While e-book technology can streamline education, struggling school districts could fall behind the digital divide.
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Kai Ryssdal: It's not the iPhone 5, it's not the iPad 3, but there was a big Apple product announcement today. A new version of its iBooks software geared at providing interactive student textbooks, which would be read -- of course -- on the iPad. The potential hurdles are many, including the fact that iPads still cost around $500.
We wanted to get away from the business case study, though, and explore what this might actually eventually mean in the classroom. So we called Katie Cohen. Until June of last year, she was a high school science teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Katie, thanks for being with us.
Katie Cohen: Thank you very much.
Ryssdal: So listen, in any ideal world, if all of your had had iPads, what would that have meant for you as a teacher?
Cohen: Well probably number one, that meant that all of them would come to class with their textbooks because I taught science and sometimes it was really hard for them to bring their text. I had so many excuses about how big they were, how heavy, etc. A better way to say that is that it would have been something cool for them. It would have been a new way to connect them to the classroom. A lot of my students were so technology savvy when it came to things like iPods. But when it came to academic technology, I felt like a lot of them were struggling in that area.
Ryssdal: OK. So let's get to the real world now, where in the Los Angeles school district -- as in many school districts around the country -- it's not like they can drop $500 for iPads for everybody.
Cohen: No, they can't. In the school that I taught at -- and in a lot of schools in LAUSD -- they're currently struggling to provide basics for their students like glue sticks, paper and pencils. So I don't really understand how they would have any more money for iPads or Kindles or e-textbooks.
Ryssdal: Yeah, but step back for me for a minute though. Because isn't there a digital divide question here because there will be districts in many cities and towns across this country where they can drop $500 for an iPad and e-textbooks. And yet a lot of kids in other parts won't have it. Then what happens?
Cohen: I already think that you already see that kind of division, where there's the "haves" and "have-nots." If you go in the direction of e-textbooks, of Kindles, of iPads,and you don't provide them at the public school level, you will just create this further divide where some people are more technologically savvy than others.
Ryssdal: You know, I said in the introduction that you're a former teacher. Many reasons obviously why people make career changes, is this one of them? Is this -- the struggles of education -- is that one of them?
Cohen: I really felt pushed and pulled out because I wanted to work in health care and now I can do that. I have the opportunity. I am in school for that. On the other hand, if I felt that I could have the freedom to teach in the way that I wanted to teach and be compensated in the way that was appropriate for my work and my education level, then there is the possibility that I would have stayed.
Ryssdal: Katie Cohen used to be a teacher at Grant High School here in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She's in graduate school now -- health care, as she said. Katie, thanks a lot.
Cohen: Thank you so much.
I'm slightly baffled why Marketplace chose to interview an ex-teacher for this story, who's already left the field for a career in health care? Anyone else find that weird? Obviously education wasn't her true passion for one thing, and for another depending on the private details of her circumstance it seems possible that she might have some ax to grind against the public school system that could color her views of educational trends and the like. It seems to me that the proper person to interview for this piece would be someone currently teaching who continues to have a stake in the success or failure of the educational system. Asking the opinion of someone who has exited teaching seems not entirely unlike asking Enron executives how the country should handle the economic crisis.
Hello. I'm the ex-teacher in the story and I specifically wanted to address this comment. I do have a passion for education- all levels and areas of education. Every single child in this country should be exposed to a baseline of education, in order to ensure that our country continues to move forward, our citizens can make rational decisions, and that we remain competitive in the global economy. My time away from the classroom has given me some perspective on what is working and not working in our education system. I do not have , "An ax to grind"- I have an insiders perspective. And as my husband and friends are classroom teachers, I am still very much connected to the issues, concerns, and legislation concerning education and teachers. I left the classroom in order to become a practitioner, but that does not mean that I have any less of a stake in the success or failure of the education system, or any less of an interest in the field.
There are way too many overpaid teachers, instructors, and professors in unions right now for this shift to happen on a massive level in the near future...it just helps their "jobs" be phased out.
Also, the main resistance to incorporating this type of technology in the classroom is piracy; popular song money is made up in concert revenue, while textbook publishers really would have a hard time filling 50,000 seat capacity venues to have people watch the book being read.
I studied the market for electronic textbooks in business school last year and I think that adoption of textbooks for iBooks or other devices will really be geared towards college students. College students have an (at least) 4 year commitment to buy their own textbooks for their courses, and as any one of them will tell you, those textbooks can be very expensive. If an iBook version of these textbooks can be sold for slightly less money, and with sufficient availability, it can be worth the investment to save on the expense of textbooks. If you add in the value of the iPad as a portable general purpose mobile device and the fact that many college campuses have total wi-fi coverage, I could see substantial numbers of students abandoning their paper textbooks.
I teach high school science at a small private school looking to add tablets as a learning tool. I'm not convinced that having books available electronically is enough to justify this cost especially considering how quickly this technology changes. Electronic books limits educators to using those that are available in an electronic format. I don't use textbooks during class. I would love to see development in other ways this tools could facilitate learning in the classroom. There are some apps available but who will shoulder the additional costs of a $2.99 app you might use for one lesson? Besides buying the tablet the cost of the books are only slightly less than the paper version and can'tbepassed on to other students the following year. This technology has a lot of potential for education but it needs further development before we can dedicate our limited funds.
