Wormbog

The future of textbooks is looking brighter. At the Penn State 1:1 computing conference I attended earlier this year one of the presenters pointed us to CK12.org for online textbooks. I had not spent much time at the site until I recently read an article about the State of California approving the CK12 Chemistry textbook for use in public schools. Not long after reading that article I was talking to our Chemistry teacher and she mentioned the need for new textbooks for the coming school year. I pointed her to the CK12 book and she liked what she saw.

You can read more about CK12 and browse their book collection here:
http://about.ck12.org/

Or watch a video here: http://www.ck12.org/flexr/

The concept of the Flexbook is what I believe the future of the textbook is all about.  Taking content written by experts and supplementing it with online content.  This will allow the textbook to be relevant and alive for the teachers and students.  Teachers will be able to adapt the material to their school’s curriculum, using sections of the text that are applicable along with online content and their own material.  The ability to share this material with others at no cost makes the model even more attractive.

The big challenge in this is access to the online textbook and online material.  Students need to have access to a device like the iPad or a computer.  As costs of hardware continue to drop and the availability of material like that from CK12 increases schools will be able to provide better learning material at lower costs.