“Well, there’s no question about it; kids today get their information electronically. As the Governor was walking in, every student out there had a cell phone out, and they were taking pictures, they were taking videos. Those devices are part of what life is like for a student in today’s world. A textbook right now is simply one part, its one element in a vast array of technologies and media sources that kids can use for anytime, anywhere learning.
Digital alternatives to traditional textbooks can enable more depth, more richness, more variety and more relevance for students. It can bring all kinds of things into the classroom that not every school has the access to be able to get. So this is something that’s very exciting; it’s wide open. Digital alternatives can bring instant feedback, it can bring assessment options, it can bring individualization of instruction.
And it can also bring all kinds of tools to the teachers. It can bring professional development opportunities and collaboration resources like they’ve never had before. So our professional educators can be given a whole new set of tools to work with.
When Pluto loses its status as one of our planets, this is not about going back and rethinking the textbooks, doing a new adoption, having billions of dollars wasted and resources used in order to create new textbooks. This is about making one change electronically and having that instantly available in all of our classrooms everywhere.”