Techbooks coming to Rogers middle schools

ROGERS -- School District administrators believe a digital textbook to be used starting this fall will be more appealing to students and less costly overall than traditional textbooks.

Discovery Education's Social Studies Techbook will allow middle school students to interact with their course content digitally through maps, activities, primary-source documents and text, according to district officials.

Discovery Education

Discovery Education “offers a portfolio of opportunities for districts to meet students where they want to learn in the digital age,” according to its website. It is a division of Discovery Communications, whose television networks include Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

Source: Staff report

A committee appointed to review electronic textbook options recommended adopting the Techbook, and the School Board approved it last month.

The committee included teachers from all four middle schools, which include grades six through eight. District curriculum specialists, technology personnel, parents, administrators and one School Board member also served on that committee, said Robert Moore, assistant superintendent for secondary curriculum and instruction.

Techbook meets the needs of today's learners, Moore said.

"Our students have been raised in a digital age and most everything they do in their lives is in front of a computer screen or in some digital way," Moore said. "So this is to try to help meet some of their own learning styles. To put the materials and things they're interacting with on the computer, that's very natural to them."

A representative of Discovery Education approached the district about its products. District administrators agreed to hear his presentation.

"We were really impressed," Moore said. "The price was right. We felt it was something we could afford to do for our kids at the middle school level."

The Techbook costs $45 per middle school student. Even if enrollment increases, the district won't have to pay for additional students to access it until the license expires in six years, Moore said. The license comes with access to several social studies courses related to world history, world geography and U.S. history.

Traditional textbooks cost more than $100 each. New ones must be purchased to replace those that are damaged or lost. More textbooks must be purchased as more students enroll.

"We think it's going to be cheaper in the long run" to invest in the Techbook, Moore said.

Another advantage of digital over paper textbooks is digital content can be changed so it remains current. Discovery Education makes that point in a flier it produced about Techbook.

"It even has weekly current events videos provided by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions," the flier states. "Maps are updated automatically as the geography of the world changes so, yes, our maps do have South Sudan and Kosovo."

South Sudan won its independence from Sudan in 2011 and Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.

Discovery Education also has science and math Techbooks. The Techbook series is used by more than 1 million students across 50 states and provinces in the United States and Canada, according to information provided by Discovery Education.

In anticipation of adopting Techbook, the district bought 990 Chromebooks for middle school social studies classes, Moore said. Chromebooks are laptop computers that are cheaper than most computers and are designed to be used primarily while connected to the Internet. They generally cost $200 to $300 each.

Sets of Chromebooks will be assigned to social studies classes. Students will not be allowed to take them home.

But Techbook works with any device, including tablets, mobile devices, laptops and desktop computers. Kids will be able to access it from anywhere they have an Internet connection, Moore said.

The experience with Techbook will help guide the district's future decisions regarding textbooks.

"It's going to help us understand what our next steps are going to be," Moore said. "In the future we might move to more electronic textbooks, and possibly stop buying as many (traditional) textbooks."

NW News on 07/23/2015

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