Another leap into the future of reading
I came across Robert Siegel’s report on HPR’s All Things Considered, that “Hawaii's 170,000 public school children did not attend school once again Friday as they marked the second of a planned 17 "furlough Fridays" for the school system. The money-saving effort gives Hawaii schools the shortest school year in the nation and has been met with furious protests from teachers and parents across the islands.”
What I was actually Googling for was something on the status Detroit’s public schools, and it was Mr. Siegel who had spotted an even worse situation than Hawaii’s. Last April 21 he reported that “Detroit's public schools are under the microscope — and a new state-appointed emergency financial manger is addressing a $300 million deficit. In the month Robert Bobb has been on the job, he has proposed closing up to 50 schools in the next two years.”
The next Robert Siegel NPR report on Detroit was on July 22, 2009: “Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called Detroit's schools a ‘national disgrace.’ The system suffers from budget deficits, corruption and a falling student population. Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, the official who will decide whether the school system will file for bankruptcy protection by the end of the summer, discusses the financial state of the Detroit Public School system.”
SIEGEL: Is it fixable or have you reached a point where, I mean you've lost -- or you will have lost about 50 percent almost of the student population in less than a decade. The problems you've recited are just colossal. Is there some point when you just say, just go to charter schools? Rethink the whole thing. Shut down the public school system.
Mr. BOBB: We will never shut down the public school systems. The school district is fixable. It will survive and it will grow stronger. You know, we may have to grow smaller to go stronger, but it will survive.”
You may well ask, what’s this got to do with HawaiiReaders.com?
I’ve been convinced for a long time that the digital revolution in publishing will really take hold in schools, as I’ve watched my son haul a 40lb backpack full of $100+ textbooks to classrooms equipped with laptops and Smartboards. Kids raised on videogames are not going to have a sentimental attachment to hardcover books.
So, what else is new?
Just another leap into the future of reading.
What triggered my Googlejourney was the announcement a couple of days ago by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the oldest publishers in the United States, that it has made the biggest deal in its history: a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. Yes, Detroit.
But this is not just an agreement to sell a digital textbook to every student. What they’re doing is far more radical, and it might just save the Detroit school system, and it might just save Hawai‘i’s school system—though I’m not even sure Hawaii public schools have access to digital textbooks yet.
Houghton will be providing a computer-based teaching system it developed with Microsoft Corp. that will connect teachers, students, and administrators. It’s a radical shift away from the classic textbook publishing model and represents an industry transformation, as technology supplants textbooks.
The key to the system is the almost instantaneous feedback that computers can give a student. This both accelerates learning and frees the teacher from the drudgery of laboriously correcting responses that a computer can check just as well. The student is free to learn as fast as she/he can, and the teacher is free to teach.
Here’s the report from the Boston Globe, edited for this site. I’m including it almost in full because I found that going to the Boston Globe url only led me to a short summary of the story. The HMH publisher’s website doesn’t yet have any information on this:
Publisher enters new chapter in textbooks
Houghton sells $40m high-tech teaching system
By D.C. Denison
Globe Staff / October 29, 2009
….“The textbook is no longer the center of the educational universe,’’ said Wendy Colby, a senior vice president at Houghton, which is based in Boston.
The Boston publisher is selling some textbooks to Detroit, but most of the contract is for such software such as Learning Village - a customized, interactive classroom network.
Detroit’s teachers will be able to prepare and assign homework through Learning Village and use its tools to measure how well students learn - even how well they understand a lesson taught earlier in the day.
“I wanted one central portal that everybody can tap into,’’ said Barbara Byrd-Bennett, chief academic officer for Detroit public schools.
The switch to electronic teaching tools is driven in part by school systems that want to prepare students for a digital world and by the availability of federal stimulus money for such programs.
“Textbook sales are definitely down,’’ said Judi Mathis Johnson, assistant professor in the Technology in Education program at Lesley University in Cambridge. “Already, a few school systems have said, ‘We’re locking up the textbooks. We’re only looking at digital products from now on.’ ’’
Houghton competitor Pearson Education is also selling more software to schools. “It’s been increasing dramatically every year,’’ said Peter Cohen, chief executive of Pearson’s US curriculum division in Boston. “Now, we don’t offer any of our textbook programs without a digital companion.’’
Last August, for example, when Pearson sold a reading program to Boston public schools, the textbooks came with a “digital path’’ that allows students and teachers to connect, via the Web, to a wide variety of companion programs.
“We are now in a transformational period. Everything we have has to be two worlds: print and digital,’’ Cohen said. “The future of learning is going to be high-quality online material and, to a lesser extent, textbooks.’’
The education publishing industry is being swept up in the swing toward digital products, which has accelerated in recent months, thanks partly to the availability of federal stimulus funds.
In September, for example, the school system in Bakersfield, Calif., launched a version of Learning Village after signing a $600,000 contract with Houghton. The community was able to get $350,000 in federal stimulus grants to help pay for the system.
“The digital transformation of textbook publishers has really picked up steam,’’ said Kathy Mickey, senior analyst and managing editor of the Education Group at Simba Information, a media industry market intelligence firm. “It’s much more than just e-book versions of textbooks. It’s companion videos, interactive games, assessment, curriculum planning tools, and on and on and on.’’
It’s also changing the relationship between schools and publishers. It’s one thing to discard a paper text; it’s more difficult for a school district to walk away from a computer system on which teachers and students depend.
A product such as Learning Village, Mickey said, “puts the publisher at the center of school action. It ties the school district to the publisher.’’
Houghton, which traces its origins back to 1832, has in recent years focused on kindergarten through high school. It now claims to be the largest publisher of educational materials for prekindergarten through grade 12.
The company has had three owners in the past 10 years.
It’s now owned by educational software company Riverdeep Group of Ireland, which has helped the venerable New England publishing house to adapt quickly to new technologies. All of the company’s textbooks - more than 2,000 - are now available in digital form. The company also has a high-tech development center in Dublin that employs 210 people.
“In many ways, Houghton and Riverdeep are well-positioned to take advantage of this trend,’’ Lesley University’s Johnson said. “Houghton has very good classroom-tested products, and Riverdeep has always had a digital, online focus.’’
The challenge, Johnson said, will be in training teachers on the new Houghton systems.
In a five-year study in the public schools of St. Lucie County, Fla., the publisher found that once teachers became proficient in using Learning Village, student performance improved.
“It took a while to get teachers trained on the system,’’ said St. Lucie assistant superintendent Owen A. Roberts. “But eventually, we were able to take advantage of the fact that everything was in one accessible place.’’
Detroit is hoping for similar results.
“I was looking for an approach that brought everything together into a unified portal, and that’s what we’re getting,’’ said Detroit’s Byrd-Bennett. “Books are still important, but in the future, school systems like ours are going to be looking for more from digital technology.’’
D.C. Denison can be reached at denison@globe.com.
And why not Hawai'i?
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/1
Tags: Add new tag, Anne Duncan, Boston Globe, D. C. Denison, Detroit schools, digital textbooks, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Learning Village, Microsoft, NPR, Robert Bobb, Robert Siegel
