[A2k] Brad Stone: Democratic Group’s Proposal: Give Each Student a Kindle

[Manon Ress]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/democratic-groups-proposal-give-ea=
ch-student-a-kindle/?hpw

July 14, 2009, 5:44 pm
Democratic Group’s Proposal: Give Each Student a Kindle
By Brad Stone
Policy and Law

Some influential members of the Democratic party want to give
electronic reading devices to every student in the country.
Kindle 2Mario Tama/Getty Images Amazon’s Kindle 2.

Amazon.com should like the name of their proposal: “A Kindle in Every
Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools,” by the
Democratic Leadership Council, a left-leaning think tank, was
published on the group’s Web site Tuesday.

Its authors argue that government should furnish each student in the
country with a digital reading device, which would allow textbooks to
be cheaply distributed and updated, and allow teachers to tailor an
interactive curriculum that effectively competes for the attention of
their students in the digital age.

“We shouldn’t wait a decade or two to begin to achieve what is
inevitable — an education system where each American schoolchild has
an eTextbook, like Amazon’s Kindle, loaded with the most up-to-date
and interactive teaching materials and texts available,” the paper
argues. “The ‘Kindle in every backpack’ concept isn’t just an
educational gimmick—it could improve education quality and save money.”

The authors of the paper have ties to the Obama administration and
influence within the Democratic party. Thomas Z. Freedman, the primary
author, is a council fellow and a former senior adviser to President
Clinton who served on the Obama-Biden transition team. Blair Levin,
another Obama transition team member, also worked on the paper but
left before it was published to join the Federal Communications
Commission to work on broadband issues.

The paper proposes a year-long pilot program, during which some
400,000 students would receive reading devices. If judged a success,
the program would be gradually scaled up to include the entire student
population within four years. They estimate such a project would cost
about $9 billion more than the amount spent to acquire print textbooks.

Such a commitment by government, they speculate, would increase
competition among device makers and drive down the cost of hardware
and electronic textbooks. Since e-textbooks are considerably cheaper
than paper versions, they project $700 million in annual savings over
traditional textbook purchases by the fifth year of the project.

Of course, such an upfront government outlay in these economic times
seems unlikely. Mr. Freedman acknowledges that, but believes the
federal government should act, particularly since e-books will
inevitably migrate into students’ hands anyway.

“There are two crucial questions. Will this improve the educational
experience for children, and is this budget neutral, does it cost
money or save money?” he said. “There are positive indications in both
of those categories that are worth investigating further.”

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Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673