I feel like I can speak with some authority and experience from an instructors view point as well as a student. Much of what is taught in grade school and even college does not change. Books can be reused for many years if they are well crafted. While in my schooling, I know I used books that were 10+ years old.

But there is also something which many people fail to get when it comes to ebooks. Humans are tactile creatures. We like to touch things. (Ever seen someone walk through a car show room and run their hand over a car…why? It doesn’t make it drive better, seem cheaper or anything else, but we like to touch things. Consider all the show rooms be it for furniture, cars, or clothes…people love to reach out and touch things to connect with them.) EBooks make things seem less real, and are harder to work with because of that.

But lets look at other things.

If every kid has to have a laptop – so the books are portable consider the options which Mike pointed out. Sally drops a coke into the keyboard, Doug leaves it at the bus stop, Bill’s cat pee’s on/in it, Sue’s fell off a cliff while working on an assignment – I worked in a college that was the first in the area to offer laptops to every student — and all of those actually happened to us though the names were changed to protect the guilty. As college students, they were expected to be mature enough to handle the property and it went to financial aid. I can’t expect that type of responsibility from my 4th grader. He still steps on his toys, accidentally drops things, and spills his milk. We haven’t bought him a laptop because he’s not ready for it – though he has had a hand-me-down desktop for 5 years because we believe he needs experience with technology. But if it’s a required laptop, and he drops, loses, etc it – who covers this cost? A book is lost, it cost $20 – $40 to replace, the laptop is 10x that. What about parents which can’t afford it. My son gets to go to a different school than he is zoned for, but his zoned school has 85% of the students are on federal assistance for school lunch. While $300-600 may not be a lot for an employed professional, I’d be willing to bet its a lot of money for a single parent who’s currently unemployed in this economic environment.

As for no new textbooks till 2016 in California, the question is still – what is going to change that they are needed? Reading, writing, humanities, history, math, economic, art, and science are all stable at the level that they learn at in grade school. A very select few subjects (current events? technology classes?) may be exceptions, but certainly not the rule. If my kindergartner or fourth grader was doing anything so advanced as to need new textbooks more than once a decade I think I’d have a coronary.

We can all agree that the schoolchildren should have access to technology, right? For typing up papers, research, etc. Why not just continue the thread? The poor user experience of a digital book can be cured, so I’m not worried about that — that’s a software issue. I do agree there are some topics where the rate of change isn’t much between even years, we have this vast database of knowledge that shouldn’t require a physical book for everything (how many copies of 1984 should we print?).

We’re at a tipping point with technology were digital books are going to be here and more affordable, and I see the way of doing things the way we did them in the past insane. The LA Times article pointed out that many children wouldn’t see new textbooks until 2016.

1) Corrections/Notes can be made in the margins…its easy and no training is required.
2) Almost any subject taught in grade school is at a level that the books can be used for a dozen years (history, math, and lets face it – science they teach in high school isn’t changing…its basic biology and Newtonian physics)
3) I can take a book anywhere – doctor’s office, car, etc and not worry about dead batteries, etc.
4) I personally find digital books hard to read (and end up printing them myself). I had to use one for a Master’s class and it was my biggest complaint – the index and search didn’t work, it crashed my computer, I couldn’t transfer the book from my desktop to my laptop, or work computer, etc. It might have been that particular software, but it was a horrible experience – and cost the same as a printed book (which I didn’t have an option to get). And before anyone tells me that they’ve gotten better since I took the class – it was only 6 months ago.

As an instructor there are topics which I cover that are cutting edge, and no book covers that material. In that case I’ve taught classes with no book…everything was my notes and on-line resources – so I am for picking the right tool for the right job – but digital textbooks are not a good idea from a strictly usability point of view.

“They’re out of date the minute their printed” – Hardly! The only text books that would ever become outdated in K-12 would be a Geography textbook. Things like Trigonometry, Biology, Chemistry, Math don’t change. The derivative of x^2 will be 2x from now until the end of time.

“The carbon footprint is huge.” – Your alternative to this is to have children with laptops? Laptops constantly need electricity to run while a textbook can sustain itself. Computers also become outdated much sooner than textbooks. Textbooks are reused year after year. How can you argue that a reusable resource (that can be recycled in the end) has a bigger carbon footprint than having every child bring a laptop?

“Make technology the responsibility of the parents.” – This will never fall completely on the parents. Not every parent will be able to afford a computer for their children. This means the state will have to provide a way for “under-privileged” families to afford them. This also means that EVERY year (as new students come in) the school will be forced to provide laptops to children whose parents can’t afford it. How is that cheaper than a textbook that can be used year after year at no cost?

One issue though – kids on the adult web. Even wikipedia has some pretty explicit adult content. Should there be a national or world wide kids intranet with browsers that can only access it for schools to use?