States move slowly toward digital textbooks

A strength of that material is that it can be customized by schools and teachers, because it is not proprietary, as commercial texts are. Carlyle points to the “FlexBooks” created by the CK-12 Foundation as an example. The foundation’s philosophy is to give digital texts to teachers and let them make changes as they see fit. “We believe the textbook should be a starting point,” says Ope Bukola, partner relations manager at CK-12. “The educator knows what’s best.”

CK-12 FlexBooks serve as the basis for the statewide open math and science texts that the state of Utah announced it will be creating in January. For Utah, the appeal of CK-12 and other open content is that it can be customized to the state’s version of the national Common Core Standards.

Commercial texts, on the other hand, are tailored to meet the needs of larger states such as California and Texas, not smaller ones such as Utah, says Tiffany Hall, the state’s K-12 literacy coordinator. “As a local control state that’s very important to us,” she says. “The [open] textbook is actually supporting what we do.”

The statewide open resource program builds off a pilot initiated in 2010 by David Wiley, an education professor at Utah’s Brigham Young University.

Though the material is obtained and edited digitally, Wiley says most schools so far have actually chosen to print it out for students, creating texts that look and feel like workbooks and cost about $5 to produce. So far, students in the pilot have shown test scores comparable to those of students using traditional textbooks. Wiley expects to see gains as the program continues.

“Every year teachers can get together and talk about what worked and what didn’t and create a new version,” he says. “Our belief is that students will learn more over time.”

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