Week 8 - Open Education Debate

According to Wikipedia, open education is the sharing of educational information and content freely over the internet.  More specifically, this debate is over California's Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to eliminate text books in California schools and replace them with open education texts.  Will this work?  Should other states follow suit?

Pros

• The text is ideally free, just as it is defined - Free is definitely cost effective. - "With textbooks costing $75 to $100, California has been spending $350 million annually buying and replacing them. Schwarzenegger says that once the digital program is in full swing, a school district with 10,000 high school students could end up saving about $2 million a year."
• Current and up-to-date texts - "when information changes, educators can make immediate adjustments."
• Texts are available at any hour and forgetting your book is not a problem.
• Students are typically tech-savvy and will excel with technological texts.
• New texts lighten the the weight students carry in their backpacks.

Cons

• Digital books still have to be approved by state textbook committees.
• Not all students have access to the internet - "It's a nice idea, but it's not going to work," says David Sanchez of the California Teachers Association. "Where are you going to get a computer for everybody? How many of these kids actually have computers at home?"
• "No kind of subtle interactive technology is mature enough for a large-scale implementation like this."
• Huge start-up costs.
• Reliability is questionable.

Overall, I feel like this is not a terrible idea.  I agree with some of the critics that Schwarzenegger's plan may be a bit pre-mature and whereas public schools give kids textbooks for minimal fees, could they do the same with electronic equipment?  In favor of this, though, I think that kids will adapt to anything, so in the long run this will probably be a move in the right direction.  Who will the resistance come from? Teachers!  Teachers will be less savvy with new technology and will feel less autonomous if someone is taking away the textbooks which they have written years of curriculum with.

As a teacher, what would I do?  I would make sure it was truely available to all students and then I'd go for it!