Comment by smspence | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smspence | Hacker News Reader

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Where did anyone say that kids' parents will have to buy these? And where are you getting this "thousands of dollars" figure from?

Most high school students don't have to buy textbooks at all. The school provides them. And nowadays, most schools already have iPads and laptops (school-owned, the parents do not buy them) that the students use in the class room. I imagine this is something that the schools will be interested in buying.

A close friend of mine is a 4th grade teacher, and it is amazing how much technology they have in the class room now. Laptops and iPads for almost every single student. This is not a school for "rich kids" either. It is an elementary school in a small town in Iowa, and not a "rich" area in any way.

I just laugh and roll my eyes when I read all the comments here that act like someone is going to hold a gun to a poor parent's head and force them to go without buying food because they have to buy iPads and "thousands of dollars" worth of books. Where is this coming from?

The licensing and economics isn't clear to me.

Can a school district buy 1,000 iPads ($500,000) and purchase one iBook to put on all devices ($15)? (total $500,015). The original cost of those books, which would last about a decade, is about $100, so the textbook investment seems a lot cheaper ($100,000).

Or are kids supposed to bring their own iPads ($500 is a lot for some families expecting "free" eduction) and the district provides licenses for the books ($15,000 for one subject per year for the above example, $150,000 over 10 years). That's still more expensive than paper books.

I started typing a response, and then I realized that there is absolutely no point to this discussion. Are we really going to speculate on the financial situation of every school in the United States? We have no idea what the financial / licensing situation is, so all we are doing is just speculating.

Here is the main take-away from today's event: Apple made some cool tools to enable people to use really neat educational materials, and also simplifies the process of producing said material. Why are we going off on all these other tangents?

While following a live stream of the presentation, I was trying to determine who the customer is, and I still don't know.

For college students, I think this makes complete sense from both an economical and practical standpoint. The iPad is a useful device beyond being a textbook reader and $15 to buy a textbook for class would be fantastic (I might pay $15 to get rid of some of the textbooks cluttering my shelf).

I don't think this college textbooks are an interesting space, however, since individuals are largely responsible for purchasing their own books. Disrupting institutional buying is game changing especially in a world where many if not most school districts are facing budget pressure year after year. This is who Algebra I, Geometry, and Biology textbooks are for, not college students. If they are the primary customer of these resources, I would expect a clear advantage in both the product and the price - similar to how digital encyclopedias and wikipedia completely eliminated the business model of the multi-volume, hard copy encyclopedia. The product appears, at face value, clearly better: up to date content, interactivity, multimedia, zero weight and volume. As far as I can tell, the price, however, is significantly higher than the incumbent product with no "results" to justify the increased price.

As someone who is interested in selling software solutions to customers, I find pitches like this interesting. I also come from a family of teachers (wife, parents, in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) and feel I can empathize with school's position as a potential customer.

I think Google's Chromebook "licensing and support" strategy might be the best fit here... allow the school a way to license yearly, not only the content but the device and a lot of hand holding.

This would give predictable costs and allow schools to outsource work they aren't as good at - tech support.

Not sure how this would play with Apple's hardware-focus sales strategy however.

So one book, for 1,000 students, would be 1/5 the cost of the iPads. That's one book.

Try four or five books, and you're close to the cost of an iPad.

But those books can be used for 10 kids (a decade of use per book, each book stays at grade level). An iPad will not last a decade in a classroom/schoolbag/kids room.

On the other hand, schools are probably interested in being able to get updated content every year, rather than using the same book for 10 years.

In some subjects, that might not be important. In others, like science or math, it might be useful to have up-to-date information presented with the latest pedagogical techniques.

Hell, being able to update textbooks to references the latest internet memes would probably do wonders at raising entertainment value.

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