SchlagerBlog

It’s an exciting time at the intersection of publishing and history education. On the publishing side, the change is coming fast and furious. Rarely a day goes by without some new announcement or reporting. Here are a few from the past month:

• Blackboard’s Bid to Galvanize E-Texts
• CourseSmart Partners with Select Higher Education Institutions to Provide Instant Access to eTextbooks
• iPad Goes Under the Gauntlet at Universities This Fall
• E-Education Inc. Seeks the Mainstream

Across the Twitterverse, on the blogs of publishing insiders, in press releases, talk of the upheaval in educational publishing is everywhere. The reasons are not a surprise to anyone: the arrival of sophisticated e-readers (not to mention mobile phones) capable of serving students;  the outdated–some would say “broken”–model of traditional textbook publishing, with companies constantly pushing out new editions to try to salvage profits in the face of the thriving used textbook market; the huge expense of that same market, and the push from state governments and students/parents alike to find more affordable options.

On the education side, these same forces are converging to produce a similar wave of change. Teachers are calling for paperless classrooms, integrating Web technologies into their classrooms in remarkable and exciting ways, and making plans to jettison their textbooks altogether. History educators have been at the forefront of these efforts, in part because the teaching of history lends itself well to an alternative model: instead of a textbook, educators can rely on primary sources and free Web resources, a scenario described nicely in this long post by Nate Kogan at his blog, “The History Channel This Is Not.”

All of this leaves me–the publisher of document-based learning tools for history students–to wonder: Is the revolution upon us? Is this really the end of the textbook as we know it? Will the traditional paper textbook disappear entirely, or will it find new life in electronic form over the coming years? Will the movement to ditch textbooks for various online alternatives become widespread or will it remain the province of an elite corps of tech-savvy educators?

My opinion is that the revolution is real, and that printed textbooks will indeed largely go away. However, I suspect that the “traditional” textbook will reappear in pretty much its current form, albeit electronically, because the dominant textbook publishers have such clout and such a strong legacy that they will be successful at convincing  school districts and university professors alike to switch to e-versions of the same textbooks they’ve been using all these years. I do think, however, that there will continue to be a subset of educators at both the high school and undergraduate levels who ditch their textbooks altogether and use alternative tools to teach history.

Now, what about Schlager Group? We obviously have a dog in this fight, and in fact this fall we will launch a new version of MilestoneDocuments.com, one that operates entirely on a subscription model for students and teachers. We think our new site can, in fact, be just the kind of alternative option that will appeal to those history educators who are most interested in leaving their textbooks behind, or at the very least augmenting them with a document-based learning approach that is built on Web 2.0 technologies. (If you are a teacher at the high school or college level and would like to sign up for a free trial once our site launches, e-mail me.)

Regardless of how successful our new site is, one thing I do know is that the pace of change wrought by all of this technology won’t slow down anytime soon. The hardware and software options will continue to evolve, students (and teachers) will become increasingly comfortable with using mobile devices, and budget pressures will continue to crack open the traditional textbook market. As a result, we see our new site as the next evolutionary step in our product line, but almost certainly not the last. Where will all of this lead us–publishers, educators, students, parents–in the next several years? I, for one, can’t wait to find out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under Textbooks, EdTech, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.