The advent of this new era of technology has created a definite schism between publication media writers and those who would avail to the new technological field. I, myself tend to agree with Watters in his argument against Apple’s creation of the new iBook studio in that I like reading hard-copy books–but only in that regard. The weight, the size, they don’t matter as much to me. Now that isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy may tablet either—because quite frankly I do, I have read entire course text-books from it. But there is something to be learned from a course text book.
Namely, and I am surprised none of these authors have spoken on the issue yet, but humans tend to learn and retain information differently from print to digital media. Also as Carmody; describes, there could be at least 12 different revolutions—apart from the ones he offers—that detail just the progression of media type formats that the media is presented on.
But what is perhaps interesting is that most publishers still push through on their print media. Despite the fact that Pearson’s has made $3 Billion last year—which a quick financial data look-up on Bloomberg tells us that it either constitutes a third of their total revenues, or three-fifths of their total gross profit, which is ostensibly large for a company with as many subsidiaries as Pearson. So one might question why exactly the firm isn’t aiming for the low cost-to-produce and high-return digital media? Print media by contrast consumed almost all of their full breadth of costs-to-produce at approximately $4 billion dollars—a little under half of their total revenues.
Whatever the case, it seems the print media is going to become a thing of the past. Just as Johannes Gutenberg spurred the world with print media, this new age of digital revolution will largely destroy the usage of print media, just like print media destroyed the necessity for verbal story telling.
I might be able to contrast against Eisenberg and Watters in their presentation that the usage of iPads would simply be too expensive for schools to implement. Allow me to run the numbers quickly. In a high-school let us suppose that there are 1,000 students (approximately 250 students per year-class). The school would need to purchase iPads for each student. At current costs—and since students are expecting use these as nothing more than basic eReaders—as provided in the text—each iPad would be priced at let’s say around 500 dollars. That’s $125,000—while that might seem like a large sum to an individual, it is surprisingly menial to many school districts (while under normal market and economic conditions I should stipulate). Now let us suppose that Apple supports education and even offers a rather decent discount for large bulk-purchases of the iPads, say 10%–bringing the total per class to approximately $112,500. So a first primary out-lay of 450,000 and then let’s suppose one-fourth of the iPads go out of commission every year for whatever reason (damaged, aged, stolen, etc.), so we will need to purchase another $112,500 worth every year.
So as not to assume perpetuity—although we can—we shall assume in this analysis a period of 10 years. Now applying the time value of money, we have the present value of this annuity with lump-sum to a total of $1,249,629—less than it cost for my high-school to build the new turf football stadium that we didn’t need. Let’s assume for the sake of simplicity that a student has on average 8 classes in high-school, and that five-eighths require textbooks. As Waters fears prices will be much higher than $15 dollars, so let’s propose $25 dollars per online textbook—per year.
That’s 5 classes, at $25 a textbook, per student, per year or $125,000 per year, reduced at present value that’s approximately $1,021,267. This means that total to do this program, it would costs a school district on average approximately $2,271,000 today.
Now let’s compare to the costs of textbooks, which is slightly more complicated—so please allow for some assumptions here. Based on statistics from some Chicago based schools—which evidently require students to purchase their own textbooks, students have a cost of approximately $400 dollars per year—let’s assume this number even though there are possibilities for getting lower costs of books, this is an isolated area, not to mention a publishing hub, making textbooks prices lower overall. Using the prior analysis basis for comparability, 1000 students at $400 a year is $400,000. We shall assume that schools are purchasing new and up-to-date books on a yearly basis, just as a digital text book would allow (although I acknowledge many school avoid doing so to save costs, and may be using text books as much as a decade or more old). Using the same rates and time for the present value calculation, we come up with the value of $3,588,346. This is the amount that a school would need today to purchase that many books over the next decade to cover costs.
Therefore, given like circumstances, is the iPad and digital revolution cheaper –without a doubt. Now let’s bring ends together here and reason that you can receive a possibly sub-par education by using aged books at lower prices—for example a school may choose to shell out only $400,000 per every 10-year period on books, in effect significantly lowering its costs, but these books are not up-to-date and may contain presently false information or less advanced methodologies of teaching. That is to say, with every benefit there is a loss somewhere else—it’s a balancing act.
For example, the cost to implement the iPad and digital media system at my high-school is approximately equal to the total pay the Vice-Principal, Principal, and curriculum coordinators received at school district, not to mention the pay of our Super-intendant over a 10-15 year period depending on the position. In some cases, this was the equivalent pay for our senior-staff football coach ( who was also a teacher at my high-school). Consider now that eliminating one of these positions could pay for this entire project. Like I said before it’s a cost-trade off issue.
Just some food for thought on this problem, I was strikingly concerned with Waters immediate conclusion that the Apple program would not benefit schools—because in reality it would financially, while still providing superior and up-to-date information.
Attribution:
Originally Uploaded By: Sucelloleiloes