Cindy and I had a commercial textbook, Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning, through 5 editions which would be approximately 15 years. Nearly 6 years ago now, we proposed to Cengage, our publisher at the time, that we explore a different model for college textbooks. We thought that our concept would be reasonably explored with our textbook because we were involved with a field that was moving very quickly at the time and because educational technology deals with helping learners via technology making our message delivered via a traditional textbook kind of disingenuous.
What called what we were proposing the $29 book project. The basic idea was to write a shorter book at a much lower cost ($29) and combine this resource with online material. The book which we referred to as a Primer would contain the content we thought was core to how technology could benefit learners and was assumed to have a three-year life cycle. The online content would contain product/service demonstrations, student project descriptions, and new content written as it surfaced. The two components were to be bound together by an “interactive syllabus” created by the instructor that would reference the Primer, link content selected for the student population from the online content we provided, and links to other content selected by the instructor.
We spent several years with Cengage discussing this project and how it might be implemented. We finally agreed to disagree and we were given the copyright for our existing content. We implemented our idea as a Kindle book, web content from the server I lease, and the suggestion that educators use Google Sites to create the interactive syllabus. The book is $9 (ebook only) and the online content is free to all.
The commercial version never materialized for multiple reasons. The price point was too low if the online content would be free. The book company wanted to professionalize the online content including using generic educational video they were producing. We wanted to create the online content using the same tools we wanted teachers to use with their students and we wanted to use project examples based on the classrooms and the teachers we described in our writing. They wanted to pay us to write every three years and I wanted to be paid to write continuously rather than every three years so that new content would constantly be available online.
I am not upset we no longer sell a $140 textbook and appreciate the professors adopting our $9 ebook for their students. The one issue that I find frustrating is the amount of use our online content receives. Cost, flexibility, and keeping content current are common complaints about college textbooks. Our free online content is available, but not used at the level we expected given the use of the Primer. I still see this flexibility as useful.
I was thinking about our content model when I just had to remove material from our online resources. This was not possible when we included obsolete content in our traditional textbook. I was a big fan of Google+ in combination with Google Hangouts. What I felt was uniquely useful in Google+ services was their idea of circles. Individual users (students) could be assigned to multiple circles depending on the content/service to be provided – students in a school, students in a class, students working on a common project. This seemed an effective and highly efficient way to control access. Once a student was in the system, it the association of students with specific circles was an easy process. I guess Google just could not find enough situations in which assignment to multiple content resources and services was that important.
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