W hen Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450, his achievement was widely
hailed as the most important event of the era. As Wikipedia notes, the printing press “played a key role in the develop-ment of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.”
Today, the transformational extension of printed text, eContent, is making just as big a splash. Many educators, thought leaders and industry experts believe eContent has the potential to impact K–12 education in transformative ways—much as its groundbreaking forebear did beginning in the Middle Ages.
By definition, eContent is digital con-tent that can be transmitted or used by
computing devices over networks and the Internet. Examples of eContent include:
• E-books and e-textbooks from trade, mass-market and education publish-ers of traditional texts that are moving quickly to satisfy exponentially increas-ing demand in the digital market
• “Active” content that allows people to explore information in more depth and in different ways with features such as Web links, images, audio, graphics, video and multimedia
• “Interactive” content that provides opportunities for people to participate, contribute and create, such as tag-ging, rating, annotating, commenting, responding, answering, manipulating, authoring, mixing, mashing, sharing, collaborating and role-playing with cus-tom avatars in virtual worlds
eContentThe Accelerating Shift from Print to Digital
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E D T E C h N E x TEmerging technology for K–12 education
“ ... eContent has the potential to impact K–12 education in transformative ways—much as its groundbreaking forebear did beginning in the Middle Ages.”
• “Adaptive” content that is person-alized, modularized and opera-tional on multiple devices
• Instructional materials created by teachers, companies and educa-tional organizations, such as syl-labi, assignments, learning objects, library resources, tutorials, 3-D models, simulations, animations, lectures, presentations, exams, quizzes and online courses
Of course, these examples can overlap. E-books and e-textbooks, for instance, replicate the look and functionality of traditional texts—and also can build in active, interac-tive and adaptive features. Indeed, Push Pop Press, a start-up digital book publishing platform, recently went live with a fully interac-tive book. Our Choice by Al Gore debuted at TED, a nonprofit dedi-cated to spreading innovative ideas. The book allows people to pull any multimedia off the digital page with a two-finger gesture and even activate a wind turbine with their breath.
Not all eContent is cutting-edge, however. A static PDF posted on a Web site meets the definition of eContent—but it’s the active, inter-active and adaptive aspects of eCon-tent that are capturing the imagina-tion of educators. Indicators of the educational interest:
• In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama urged adoption of digital text-books. The National Educational Technology Plan (2010) encour-ages the use of digital content to
support 24/7 learning, person-alized learning, collaborative learning, online and blended learning, on-demand courses and other self-directed learn-ing opportunities. The National Broadband Plan (2010) recom-mends that the U.S. Department of Education support educational access to standards-aligned digi-tal resources.
• The 2011 Horizon Report listed e-books and mobiles as tech-nologies to watch for mainstream adoption on the near horizon (within the next 12 months) in educational institutions, up from the mid-range (two- to three-year) time-to-adoption horizon in the 2010 report. New capabilities of e-books, from immersive experi-ences to support for social interac-tion “are changing our percep-tion of what it means to read.” eContent also is transforming what it means to write, with tradi-tional “written” texts now created digitally and enhanced with digital content.
• While the 2011 K–12 Horizon Report did not specify eContent as a technology to watch, it did put cloud computing and mobiles on its near horizon, game-based learning and open content on its mid-range horizon, and learning analytics and personal learning environments on its four- to five-year horizon. Clearly, eContent is inherent in all of these emerging technologies.
recipients expect to implement or expand the use of digital textbooks in the next two to three years, and 45 percent expect to implement or expand the use of handheld devices for educational purposes.
• For libraries, 86 percent of staff and patrons regularly use or access online reference materials and 62 percent consider them the most essential.
Source: Federal Communications Commis-sion. 2010 E-Rate Program and Broadband Usage Survey: Report.
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CoSN Member Only
The Educational Potential of eContentThree realities are driving the growing appeal of eContent in K–12 education.
First, the widespread adoption of smart, mobile devices means that stu-dents want and expect to use these devices to learn. Portability, convenience and anytime, anywhere access are part of the reason for the exploding demand. For many students, eContent is much more engaging —and educa-tional—than printed text or teacher-directed instruction.
Second, cloud computing is fast becoming a solution to storing, deliver-ing and processing computing resources, including digital content, appli-cations, data and connectivity. The cloud offers device-agnostic access to eContent, among many other educational benefits.
Third, severe budget constraints are challenging schools to find more cost-effective ways to provide instructional materials and learning approaches. School officials are beginning to realize that digital content, accessed on mobiles via cloud computing, could help them stretch their lim-ited dollars—and improve educational outcomes—by:
• Reducing costs of purchasing and managing (tracking, storing, replac-ing) printed textbooks and other printed materials
• Expanding the use of free and credible digital resources
• The Pearson Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a three-year initiative in the spring of 2011 to develop open and commercial digital instruc-tional resources. The partner organizations will create 24 online courses aligned to the Common Core State Standards adopted by more than 40 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. terri-tories. The courses will use video, interactive software, games, social media and other digital material to prepare students to meet K–10 math standards and K–12 reading/English language arts standards. Third-party providers may supple-ment the courses with their own digital content.
• EdSteps, led by the Council of Chief State School Officers, is cre-ating a large, public, web-based library of digital student work samples in key skill areas that are difficult and costly to assess. Teachers, parents and students can submit student work in the five skill areas—writing, global competence, creativity, analyzing information and problem solv-ing—and review submitted work to judge its effectiveness. The work will be evaluated by expert teams and presented as a gradual pro-gression from emerging to accom-plished work. The first full writing continuum will be published in June 2011.
• Increasing the use of materials that give more bang for the buck, such as bundled packages that combine academic content, learning and instruc-tional tools and resources, and assessments
• Targeting purchased instructional resources only to those who need them
• Extending time for learning
• Creating more engaging learning environments, including virtual envi-ronments that allow students to manipulate and control variables in sci-ence, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and other subjects
• Offering formative assessments and measures of learning progression
• Extending the reach of highly effective educatorsA standing-room-only crowd at a spring 2011 CoSN CTO Clinic hosted
by the Georgia K–12 CTO Council illustrates the sway of “bring your own device” strategies. “The conversation was not, ‘Will we adopt this technol-ogy?’” says Ann Ware, project director of the CoSN Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent Initiative and a member of the CoSN Emerging Technologies Committee. “It was, ‘When will we do it and how will we plan for it?’” A plan must have a path toward greater use of eContent for mobiles to be most effective.
Forsyth County Schools, GA, embraces both “bring your own devices” and eContent. The district’s purposeful advance along a “digital learning continuum” has been a positive disruption in teaching and learning—and a smart fiscal strategy, according to CoSN Board of Directors Chair Bailey Mitchell, the district’s chief technology and information officer. The district offers:
• Access to digital content. Subscriptions to a number of educational portals, such as BrainPOP (www.brainpop.com), ExploreLearning (www.
explorelearning.com) and netTrekker (www.nettrekker.com), provide digital content that extends classroom resources.
• A learning management system (LMS). Blackboard’s ANGEL Learn-ing Management Suite (http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/
Products/Blackboard-Learn/ANGEL-Edition.aspx) helps teachers organize their own instructional content online and gives students easy access to it wherever they are, whatever their device.
• Professional development. The district provides “curriculum evange-lists” who help teachers find relevant and appropriate digital content and model ways to integrate it into their instructional practices.
The results of these offerings are impressive:
• Extended time for learning. “The LMS is most heavily used between 4:30 and 10:30 p.m. every day, when students are at home,” Mitchell says. “We have extended the school day in a huge way.”
• More engaging classrooms. With lectures, flipcharts and other class materials available digitally, some teachers are “flipping the model” for instruction. Instead of using textbooks and other traditional materials to drive instruction, teachers are using digital content to scaffold instruc-tion. They also are using their class time for more engaging pedagogy, such as such as discussions, inquiry and collaboration, Mitchell says.
• More creative teaching. Allowing students to use their diverse range of devices for classroom learning challenges teachers to be creative. Because student-owned devices have different features and capabilities, all stu-dents in a classroom can’t do the same things at the same time. “That makes you think differently as a teacher,” Mitchell says.
• A digital library to support blended, online and personalized learn-ing. Teachers have created, gathered and organized enough digital resources to cover entire courses. A district goal is to offer some online component for every class to create a blended learning environment—and even offer whole courses virtually. Digital content will support per-sonalized learner plans, now under way, for every student. The personal-ized learning plan helped the district win a competitive, five-year Invest-ing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010. Central to this plan is a “learning marketplace” of eContent that teachers can use to support individualized learning preferences, hab-its and progress, all informed by longitudinal and formative assessment data.
• Cost savings on textbooks. The district is spending less on text-books and instructional materials overall, even as it builds it capacity in eContent. “Digital content has a long tail,” Mitchell says. “Considering its potential
for market penetration across the nation and the world, digital educational content is the ultimate long-tail commodity. Our investments in digital con-tent have risen 44 percent in the last four years, while our traditional text-book expenditures dropped 83 percent in the same time period. If we were able to quantify all the resources that come with a textbook in terms of data storage (gigabytes) how would it compare to the GB of data from a digital content provider? And thus what is the return on learning?”
“ The conversation was not, ‘Will we adopt this technology?’” says Ann Ware, project director of the CoSN Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent Initiative and a member of the CoSN Emerging Technologies Committee. “It was, ‘When will we do it and how will we plan for it?’”
U sing eContent for educational purposes isn’t necessarily a
plug-and-play endeavor. Here are a few “heads-up” issues to consider.
Device matters. Not all device “form factors” support all the func-tionality of eContent. For example, at this point Apple devices do not support Flash applications. On the other hand, many content provid-ers are creating digital content for particular devices. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. and Pearson, for example, recently announced that they are designing educational resources for the iPad. Should districts follow publishing companies in their device selec-tions? Districts and schools need to think through whether to support a bring-your-own, school-supplied or blended device environment. Bring-your-own-device approaches make it more difficult to integrate eContent in the same way for every student—but it could encourage creative uses, as in Forsyth County Schools. School-supplied devices may be more costly, both in terms of purchasing and managing. Dis-tricts and schools need to make equitable access an important con-sideration in deciding which way to go. What is the right solution for students and teachers?
eContent matters. Just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it’s good or appropriate instructional mate-rial. eContent may not have any state or district seal of approval, or alignment to academic standards, as textbooks often do. Someone needs to search for and evaluate
the content. “Getting digital con-tent into the instructional mix is a real challenge,” Forsyth County Schools’ Mitchell says. Teach-ers often aren’t sure where to look or how to use it—or they don’t have time for this effort. Who will ensure content accuracy and cred-ibility of publishing organizations?
External groups, such as the Learning Registry (www.learning
registry.org), could handle sorting and vetting of digital content. This collaboration among several federal agencies makes federal learning resources easier to find, access and integrate into learning environ-ments wherever they are stored—around the country or the world.
New models of paying for and distributing content. Districts and schools need to sort through options to incorporate digital con-tent broadly into education. Is the content free or is there a cost? Is it better to lease, buy, license, sub-scribe or “pay as you go”? Should the district or school own the con-tent, or should students pay for it? Some content providers, such as Apple iTunes, go directly to con-sumers. Which model, or set of models, makes sense? Content pro-viders are as interested in different business models as districts are.
Data collection. eContent, apps and vendors can capture data about student learning that can be very valuable for educators. For example, time spent on a task; number of tasks completed; stu-dent work and performance results; and even student location while
engaged in e-learning could inform decisions and instruction. Is there a transparent way for schools to get and use this data?
Student privacy, data security, and equitable, fast and reliable access. Ensuring compliance with federal regulations (e.g., Children’s Internet Protection Act, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), data security and easy access to eContent could be more burden-some for districts working with multiple vendors.
To access digital resources, stu-dents and teachers may wind up with multiple user names and pass-words, which are difficult for them to remember. Multiple sign-on IDs also tax educational technology staff to set up and maintain—and, potentially, open the door to secu-rity breaches. Some K–12 districts are making digital content available with single sign-on access through identity and access management (IAM) or federated IAM systems. To learn more about this solution, see Single Sign-On, Multiple Benefits: A Primer on K–12 Federated Iden-tity and Access Management, a newly released members-only publica-tion developed by CoSN and other partners.
Infrastructure and interoperabil-ity are access issues that impact the use of digital content as well. Dis-tricts and schools need to make sure they have adequate bandwidth and devices, whether school- or student-owned, to provide equitable, fast and reliable access to this content. They need to make sure that the content “plays well” with the devices
they use. Districts and schools also need to
decide where their digital resources will be stored. On in-house servers? In private, public or hybrid clouds? With third-party providers? Cloud computing is an increasingly viable solution—but it demands that dis-tricts take stock of their educational needs and technology resources to find a solution that matches their requirements.
Legal and copyright issues. Digital content seems as readily available as the air we breathe. Who owns this content? Can schools use anything they find on the Internet or is it copyright-protected? Do they need to give credit—or pay for—digital content that seems to be “free”? What about teacher-created content? Does the district or school own it, or does the teacher?
Professional development. For digital content to transform educa-tion, teachers need training to over-come the hurdles of selecting and creating eContent and embedding it into an enhanced learning envi-ronment. How will this be done? Library media specialists, academic coaches, curriculum experts? Face-to-face and online communities of practice? Third-party digital content providers that offer support for cur-riculum integration and alignment to standards?
Technical Considerations continued from page 7CoSN appreciates the support of these EdTechNext sponsors:
Q. How will eContent change teaching and learning in the next five years?
Christopher Brown, program director, Pearson Foundation Research Program, the nonprofit arm of Pearson, an international media and education company:
“Although the landscape will continue to change and vary, the four most compelling developments I foresee are:1. Increasing eContent storage in the cloud2. Increasing ‘social’ content, including crowd-
sourcing replacing the traditional expert-ori-ented system, personalized content sharing and peer-to-peer interactivity
3. New ‘learning analytic’ tools and demand for their integration into eContent. At first these will require trained professionals to use effectively, but over time, and beginning with relatively simple measures such as those now used in web analytics (but tailored for teaching and learning), these tools will become available to end users with a stake in them (either as learners or people responsible for teaching and learning).
4. Not ‘ just the program or e-book’ anymore. eContent will help define a new model for very dynamic learning environments capable of being highly personalized to the learner, tailored in other ways meeting specific district/school/learner needs and built with multiple feedback for continual improvement.”
Din Heiman, chief operating office, BrainPOP, a creator of animated educational resources: “In all but the youngest grades of K–12, we’ll see a reversal of the current situation. ‘Content’ will be assumed to mean electronic unless specifically designated as ‘print content.’ The acceptance of digital content—and all the flexibility, creativity and innovation that can come along with it—will quickly return the focus from whether content is ‘digital’ or ‘print’ to how great a specific resource is (or isn’t) for the instructional task at hand. ”
Q. Will educator-created content become a niche industry?
Christopher Brown: “If by educators we mean ‘teachers’ then the uptake of this is going to con-tinue to be limited by a lack of time. To some extent, easier content producing tools will help. However, if we move toward a different concep-tion of teaching and learning that is project-based, then the game can change more quickly.”
Q. What new features or uses of eContent are on the horizon?
Din Heiman: “Collaboratively created con-tent, student remixed content, self-‘published,’ widely shared—and free—these will increasingly take the place of standardized and prescriptive learning resources. Professionally created tools and content will serve a role in sparking that creativity and focusing it on valuable learning outcomes.”
Industry Perspectives on eContentWhat do industry experts believe is the future of eContent in education? To find out, we asked two industry experts.
CoSN EdTechNext Reports3G and Beyond: Smart, Mobile Devices and e-ReadersCloud Computing: A Billowing Virtual Infrastructure for Services—and SavingsFlexible Mobile Platforms: Managing DiversityLearning Objects: Big Concepts in Flexible Formats
New! 2011 CoSN PrimersSingle Sign-On, Multiple Benefits: A Primer on K–12 Federated Identity and Access ManagementInteroperability Standards for K–12 Education: Working Together for a Compat-ible, Affordable IT Future
CoSN publications can be found at www.cosn.org.
Additional ResourcesCenter for Digital Education. (2010). Converge Special Report: Digital Con-tent & Learning Management Platforms.
