Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger drew national attention last May when he proclaimed a free digital textbook initiative. He caught a second wave of publicity three months later when he declared that 10 of the vetted digital science and math texts were well aligned to state standards and were ready for downloading.

Since then, it’s been pretty much of a dud, which is not all that surprising. August was too close to the opening of school for most schools to switch textbooks – even  for free. And the cash-strapped state was offering no incentives and, more importantly, no training for teachers on how to integrate them into the classroom.

But one district, Riverside Unified, has risen to the challenge, and its director of K-12 instructional technology says Riverside wants to be in the vanguard of an online movement that inevitably will radically change the way textbooks are priced, presented and taught.By the end of the month, Jay McPhail said, students in one class in each of the district’s seven high schools will be using digital texts on a variety of electronic readers provided by the district. And two dozen teachers who volunteered for the initiative will soon be working digital texts into their daily instruction.

With traditional high school textbooks costing between $75 and $120 each, Schwarzenegger stressed the digital initiative’s potential cost savings. The state alone spent $350 million last year on instructional materials. And no doubt districts will save dollars as they begin to use the free “flexbooks” published by Menlo Park-based CK-12 Foundation and other options. CK-12’s  seven digital texts got high ratings from the state, including three — in calculus, chemistry and trigonometry – that were 100 percent aligned with state standards.

But McPhail and CK-12 co-founder Neeru Khosla see the biggest benefit in enriching and individualizing instruction. Freed from the constraints of one, high-cost paper textbook, teachers will choose from among many digital texts, some produced as a wiki, with authors sharing and modifying content. One etext may offer the best unit for students stuck on quadratic equations, while tutorials and videos will be embedded in another.

Hampered by the state’s requirement that they be presented in a PDF format, the first generation of digital texts approved by the state lack rich interactivity. But that’s quickly changing.

McPhail predicts that traditional textbook publishers like Pearson Education will be forced to adapt – selling digital content in modules, not textbooks — or perish. He draws an analogy with the record labels that, to survive, have come to grips with selling songs online instead in plastic CDs.

That’s years away. Meanwhile, Riverside Unified is going one step at a time. The  district has formally adopted standards-aligned digital texts. Two honors biology,  one chemistry, one  calculus, one geometry and two Algebra II classes are  using digital texts. McPhail says the district is experimenting with several readers:  iPod Touch, inexpensive Netbook computers and a model made by Intelligent Papers. The students can take notes with them; several models incorporate an Internet browser.

About a quarter of  families lack computer access, McPhail figures, but the digital divide is overstated. A reader will soon cost about the same as a traditional textbook, and can store the equivalent of 40 of them. Districts can provide them and still come out ahead.

McPhail said that Riverside Unified may seek an I3 grant, an offshoot of the federal Race to the Top competition for districts, not states, to expand its digital initiative. If not Riverside, then certainly some enterprising districts – in Silicon Valley, perhaps? – should pursue one.

It’s too early in the year to answer the big questions: How will students and their teachers adapt to this new world, and will digital texts help them learn?

I’ll be checking back in coming months for clues.

By John Fensterwald on December 1st, 2009