

What Steve Jobs Thought About Textbooks - mikecane
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/what-steve-jobs-thought-about-textbooks/

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angdis
While I appreciate the obvious advantage of not lugging heavy books around,
that's the least of the problems with textbooks.

Has anyone taken a look at what they're using in high-schools these days?
IMHO, there is a _serious_ problem with content. I helped my niece with her
algebra and could not believe how much useless junk was cluttering the
textbook. Every few pages had the "USA Today" logo (in "real-world example"
problems) and some reference to an insipid product called "foldables" (special
note-taking paper). The beginning of the book had literally pages of the head-
shots/bios of the dozen+ "authors" of the textbook. The whole thing was a
designed-by-committee train-wreck. It would be laughable were it not for the
fact that our students will have to compete in the global economy after being
trained by materials like this.

My concern is that app-textbook development will not resolve the intrinsic
problems that textbooks have with their content. The textbook vendors go out
of their way to pander to whatever the school boards want out of their
textbooks (without regard to the fact that it is often half-baked). How will
ipad textbooks be any different?

