I hear that’s actually done in China and other Asian countries; children only need to tote the chapters relevant to what they’re learning at the time.
Yeah, I probably could, although I’d have to wade through the junk room at work to find one of those drives.
But of course you don’t have to wait until the media is on its very last legs. Years ago, I realized that 5 1/4" disks weren’t going to be useful for much longer, so I went through my collection and copied the things I wanted to keep onto newer media. If ten years from now, CDs have dwindled in popularity and it looks like CD-ROM drives won’t be around for much longer, that will be the time to back them up, even if the discs themselves will last for decades.
There are schools without lockers. Heck, my school had lockers, but not enough for the entire student body. Because of that, the only way you could get a locker is if you had your doctor sign a note, then you met with the principal and mom or dad to discuss the issue. Yeah.
What’s interesting to me about this idea is that it can get around one of the big problems with school textbooks these days, which is that their content is set pretty much exclusively by the demands of the two biggest consumers of textbooks: California and Texas. Instead of having those two states determine what every kid in the country reads, textbook “publishers” can create gigantic digital textbooks, and individual schools can purchase the rights to print and distribute whichever chapters they feel best fit their curiculum. The school puts a high-quality color printer in every class room, and the teacher prints out the material the students need to take home that day. Each kid still gets a hardcopy so they can do the work even if they don’t have access to a computer. Plus, they can mark it up with whatever notes they feel they need to understand the material without defacing a textbook.
Why don’t we just get bigger kids?
This is true. I chaired a textbook committee for LA Unified, and was surprised at how much attention I was getting from publishers. (Free books, tapes, CD-ROMs, people from all over the country calling me on my cell to whom I’d never given my number.) Some of the State’s textbook demands can be interpreted in such a way as to make the writing of a textbook quite difficult, if not downright pointless. This article from a San Diego weekly does a good job of describing the process.
Whether a text is digital or otherwise, however, those publishers get their pound of flesh from the State and federal funded school districts. They might just as well charge the same price for an ebook as for a “real” book.
You forgot one:
- Paper books do not require electricity in any form. Just light, and the ability to read.
This is, IMHO, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the digital book: at some point, some device that is powered by electricity has to understand it and interpret it in such a way that you, the reader, can understand it. Even if all you do is open the book’s file up to print it on paper, you still need power. Yes, most places in the Western world have a steady and reliable supply of power. But not always–anybody remember the northeast US’s and eastern Canada’s Big Blackout of August 2003? Living in Ontario at the time and facing an important deadline, I wasn’t stopped–I could still work, because I could read documents by daylight and make my notes with pen and paper. Just like I always have. Though I will say that when the power came on, I used my handwritten notes to write my drafts on my desktop non-battery-powered PC.
But I digress. If I had to comment on the OP, I’d be more in favour of an inexpensive and simple “reader” that could take, say, a PDF file and display it on screen with an option of printing to hardcopy. No gaming, no Internet (except perhaps to be able to download PDF files, though perhaps not even that–maybe just the ability to read a memory stick would do), no applications or frills or frippery of any kind. It wouldn’t be as useful as a computer (though kids could always have the ability to use their own or their family’s computer, if they wished). It would just be a PDF reader–say, small enough to fit in a pocket and thus portable enough to take back and forth to school, but large enough to hold megabytes of PDFs. And inexpensive–that’s key. Some kids will lose them, break them, or damage them; and they have to be cheap enough that kids of all economic levels can buy another one fairly easily if they have to. Then, the school could give out the book PDFs to the kids via the memory sticks or the limited downloading capability, and the kids could read or print them from their Readers.
Readers like this one run on easily obtained AAA batteries.
Yes, and I notice that it has one review and a one star rating at that.
I have tried downloading books to my palm/pocket pc device. I read very fast and the little bit of text that would fit on that screen meant I spent all my time going from page to page. Having a device more book sized that was rechargable, worked plugged in, had more memory and was more flexible than those available would be a dream.
I hope a solution comes, not just for students, but for avid readers. Knowing I could pack a months worth of books in one simple device would be fabulous. We have been able to do it with music and text is easier to compress than audio.
I’m curious what this conversation will look like 10 years from now.
Our power went out the other night, the flashlight was dead, the candle too dangerous to read myself to sleep to and my rechargable pocket pc won the no electricty war.
Try a hurricane lamp. We have a couple; you fill them with lamp oil, and they give much better light than a candle. I used them during the Big Blackout I referred to earlier. Felt like I was in “Little House on the Prairie,” but my work got done. Turn them down when you’re done reading; they will go out safely.
I’m glad to hear that you also love books, Auntbeast. I know of a university library that got rid of (well, put in storage) one third of its books because, “the same information is available online.” So much for borrowing a book for a good read under one of the campus trees!
FTR, last time we moved, the movers estimated my wife and I had 4000 pounds of books. That’s been added to since. Probably up to 5000 pounds now. I cannot imagine not reading from a book–and I used to write and edit computer manuals! Trust me, I know the problems online manuals can cause.
Germany, Bavaria.
My kid’s school does this. But it’s only one extra set of books (for the classroom); Not a double set for each kid.
Looking back to my very early school days, PDF files have a major drawback: you can’t hit other kids with them 
Given how heavy (like a brick) American school books are, I wouldn’t do that with the paper version, either - if you can lift them enough to hit somebody, you might crack his head! 
I thought you were, or so I keep reading 
If I understand this correctly, then your students are connecting via the net. You may not appreciate the number of kids who can’t do this at home. A lot of Dopers are fairly well off and kind of think that everyone has the internet.
I address this post # 9.
Over 73% of households are connected and it’s likely to be higher for households with kids. That 1 out of ever 8 or 9 kids can’t connect to the net is no reason not to provide this low cost, useful service for those who can.
Which is only going to make the underpriviledged kids fall even FURTHER behind their classmates. Yeah, great idea.
(Note-I’m not saying we should hold everyone back to the minimum level. But for something like this, the kids who don’t have the net are going to need a service like this even MORE than their fellow students, I would think)
So… what’s your solution? Not to do it all all because approx 10-20% of kids might not have net access. Again, bear in mind this is supplemental service, not instead of books. If we’re going to wait until every poor kid has some kind of net ready ebook this project will never get off the ground.
I’ve re-read the OP, and it wasn’t clear to me that you didn’t mean INSTEAD of the books. No, I didn’t read much farther, sorry.
As for lockers, there are many HS without lockers. They’ve been regarded as an additional expense, as far as I can tell, which the districts are willing to skip, because, hey, it’s not the board members who have to carry the books. Also, if you have a class set, the kids can already not have to carry them.
I like the idea generally of making kids pay for lockers, but you know that when one kid got the money for a locker, he’d tell 5 friends the combination. I don’t know that it’s a real problem, though. Wouldn’t that at least cut the cost every year enough that it would be worth it?
Actually, you’ll get some teachers and administrators who will say that it will make for too many tardies as kids stop at the locker. I think that’s a lame reason, but I predict it will happen.