[CZ: Fair point. But how many books from the Library of Alexandria can you sit down with today?]

Never even thought of that….good thoughts. I guess a total positive is the instant updating of material (oh how I hate it when I realize a kid has the 3rd edition instead of the 6th edition and while im teaching about XYZ they are reading about what we knew about XYZ 6 years or more ago….when your textbook cache has 60 books and you have 63 students, whatta ya going to do?).

Still, while smartboards and the like are expensively creeping into classrooms, and iEverything makes its way to the hands of the population the kids are going to want better stuff. My school was having a grand old time trying to turn the problem of cellphones (Jacob, please turnoff your cell phone) into a solution (Jacob, I see your phone is on..can you check wikipedia for us and see if they have posted anything new about XYZ…). I know….wiki as a primary source….bad..I know!!! Just an example. TEchnology in the classroom is going to be changing, and we need to stay ahead to optimize that which is education – learning – and fortify it with what the kids know/use, but sometimes the over-technologification (yeah, I just invented that word so Carl can toss it on his list ) of education ends up as a net loss. I see – highschool – textbooks as online formats only as a net loss, in the end. University, online learning, etc…potential. But there are economic costs, too, as Larry pointed out.

for classroom use I know I would never go there. It would be good for kids to be able to log on to their online text, use it at home (never forget their book!!!) but as a teacher I can never assume that all kids have internet, ipad,whatever. I need to revert to the baseline of technologies that I can give them. They may catch on in universities where computer access and personal time on computers is not a limitation, but for highschools it will never catch, for teachers or for kids. This also links into a “computer for every kid in the classroom” debate, in which there would have to be a screen at every desk in order to use the etext as we would use the real text. Good idea, limited practicality in todays classroom. Also, I fear the day all teaching is e-teaching. Not as a teacher, but as a learner.

Larry–as an author of a textbook, do you think etextbooks will become popular? That was another topic of discussion.

They’ll become popular as soon as the publishers figure out a way to recover their costs and make some profit. We’re currently in the middle of producing the 5th edition of my book and right now there are eight people working full time on the project and half a dozen more working part time (including reviewers). They don’t work for free.

Do you think students are going to pay $100 for an electronic version of a textbook that they can’t re-sell?

Interestingly, like hyper-local newspapers, new small presses are popping up all the time. And the art of crafting homemade books is becoming more popular.

My opinion is that books will eventually become obsolete. But most of us won’t live to see that day. The question becomes: Who, if anybody, will be able to make a living as a writer?