The eText Conundrum, Part II: iPads, Databases, and Widening Gyres

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction while the worstAre full of passionate intensity. - "The Second Coming" William Butler Yeats

Dramatic Enough?

@40ishoracle Commentary: Release the CODES!

In Part I, we left off with students able to open their electronic textbooks, having finally reached the right tech support person within the Pearson hierarchy who was able to release the correct code. Another notch in our BYOT belt was checked. That was Friday.

Over the weekend, I received an email from a distraught parent. Her son was unable to open the BIology textbook despite the codes given, the user created, etc. The parent needed to find out the refund procedure in order to trade in their electronic license for a paper copy (although later we found out the student might actually have been pushing for the iBooks copy, although that is still a little hazy on this end).

Since I have people at MBS monitoring this blog ("hi, @mbstextbook), I decided to email a few of them to get the ball rolling.  Early Monday, I met with the teacher, got the student access code, and began working on the problem in her classroom. In front of me, a laptop logged into the teacher's account on Pearson Database ALPHA, an iPad from the teacher resource center, a chromebook, and an ASUS Transformer Prime.

Biology book on laptop - Check
Chromebook - Check

These versions were in FLASH, so that was clearly not going to be the solution (and thus far, that was the only instruction they had been given).

To the interwebs!

Need to read a Pearson textbook? There's an app for that...in fact there are like 5 of them. A quick help search showed that the high-school version was "Pearson for Schools". Downloaded the app. Installed. Used the login that I had created with the student code and smiled that knowing-smile that says "no problem"

The login/password that you have typed is incorrect or you do not have any books available for this format.

 So, the Pearson App is unable to tell which of those two VERY different issues is the problem? Seriously?

Confirmed that Pearson login was correct (as far as I knew). So now I am faced with the very real possibility that this book does not have an iPad equivalent. My @mbstextbook reps tell me that they are in conversation with Pearson.

The web gives me one help page that says Pearson is "compiling a list of books that are compatible with their online app". Ouch. A second page gives me a list of books, but our book is not one of the four Biology textbooks listed. Double Ouch.

More emails. I send out a tweet of desperation and get another @mbstextbook rep. working on my problem. I also receive this from the regional sales manager @Pearson:

@jdferries maybe because you didn't buy the access from pearson?
— David Hartman (@dthartman) August 20, 2012

Outstanding. More sales reps appearing bitter and unwilling to help a customer. Way to control the social media image of your organization. My first response was the snark version of my thoughts from the last post: if you don't want to support 3rd party distributors, quit using them. But when I attempted to engage with a legitimate plea: If i could get any rep to tell me there is an iPad/Android version of this book, that would be something... I was ignored.

My day ended with my @mbstextbook rep on a plane, no contact from @pearson support, frustrated teachers and students and parents. I sent out my last slightly-annoyed "where are we?" emails.

The next day, bright and early, I got an email from my in-flight @mbstextbook rep: "We have other schools opening that book on the iPad. There is a technical issue. I talked to a guy who is going to call you. Let me know!"

I had missed a call! and an email! (grr AT&T). A little phonetag later and I was introduced to a tech. A hardcore, knows his stuff, tested the solution before he called me, genuine support tech from @pearson. Without a doubt, Chris Holder is awesome!

The Solution:

• Pearson Database ALPHA gives access to the web versions of the text and the tablet version of SOME texts. But NOT the Biology book. 
• iPad Access is granted through Pearson Database GAMMA.
  ...but first
• He gives me access to Pearson Database BETA (remember? from Chemistry). I have to do a bulk upload of students in biology (who purchased the book).
• To get the bulk upload into the template I take students in biology out of Brebeuf Database Alpha and match them to student emails out of Brebeuf Database Beta (Why, hello, MSExcel, long time no use!).
• After uploading the template, I create a fake teacher account and log into Pearson Database GAMMA
• I have to hand type each student name until the GAMMA database pulls the student name from the BETA database. --> One hundred and eighty three students later.
• Test on the tablet. Successful.
• Grab a Freshman out of #digcit. Test on iPad successful
• Email new usernames and passwords to Biology teachers.
• DONE!

Whew!

From Science Department Chair:

@jdferries Pearson online chem book still not working...
— jbrady (@mrbradybjps) August 22, 2012

Reflection:

We are in the infancy of eTextbooks. We as educators and techs must understand this. While technology may be moving faster, bugs must still be worked out of systems.

But publishers and distributors have a responsibility as well. They cannot sell systems as simple and easy if it requires access to 3 different publisher accounts under two different usernames (in addition to two potential school databases).

In the effort to leverage textbooks into online learning management empires, publishers are forgetting a few essential things:

1. Simplicity. Teachers want students to have a textbook. That process should be simple. Teachers are not accountants, book managers, or your employees.
2. Educational technology, including eTextbooks should be used if it makes a teacher's job easier or has a direct and measurable impact on the learning of the student. This process did neither of those things and kept the text out of the hands of students until the 3rd week of school.
3. Teachers have neither the time nor the desire to learn a complex system laden with features that are of no interest to them. Your leverage only work until it breaks and when it does, you will have a lot of time and effort wasted for want of more power.

Publishers and Distributors need to stop throwing each other under the bus. If they are partners, they need to consistently act like it. They should do what they do best: Get excellent content into the hand of teachers and student quickly and at an affordable rate.

I agree with @explanarob that eTexts are the future and that beyond their benefits of searching, notetaking, and sharing, we must find ways to embrace their analytic and content-update aspects. But at the end of the day, we're creating incredibly complex systems that cannot be used, nor understood, by the users who need the benefits the most.

That is the centre that cannot hold...

Less empire building.
Less blame throwing
Less complexity

Good content. Affordable. Easy.

Students are waiting.

The eText Conundrum - A BYOT Fiasco Resolved Over 6 Days, Part I

Let me preface this rant (and oh, there will be ranting) with the following disclaimer: I don't really believe any of the actors in this situation are evil. Self-interested? Sure. Willing to dodge issues and give problems to others? Absolutely. But there is no need to assign maliciousness when incompetence will suffice. And the more complex a system, the more room incompetence has to stretch its legs. and with that...

BYOT Day 6:

I receive an email with the subject line "may be time for you to get involved". Attached is a string of increasingly frustrating correspondences between my science teachers, the 3rd party book distributor that the school uses, and @Pearson publishers.

The tale of woe features the Freshman Biology textbook. In the spirit of BYOT and after surveying students, the science department decided last spring to require the eText version of the Biology textbook. This was news to the IT department. We thought we had a handle on all of the classes doing this (we have about 4 classes with mandatory eTexts, ranging from PDFs to Kindle books to Publisher/Distributor branded formats). In fact, we had specifically avoided making some classes mandatory since the e-text came from Pearson Publishing.

Interlude: What's So Wrong with Pearson?
Pearson publishing is one of the big names in textbooks and there are not all that many names. For those of you not in education or only in the technical side of education, textbooks are a BIG DEAL. Publishers send local sales reps to show off the newest in textbooks and supplemental materials. For years, these supplemental materials have taken the form of technology and in very recent years, eText access has been huge. Any one of the many issues with this nexus of for-profit business and the generally not-for-profit vocation of education could be the focus of one of my really long blogs.

Pearson, as all good businesses do, wants teachers to use as many of its products as possible. A step in this direction has been the creation of a virtual empire of educational online services that leverage their high-quality textbooks to hook teachers (and subsequently students) into its other offerings. If every student in a school has been entered into the Pearson LMS with its myriad of assignments, notes, reading checks, etc., because of one textbook purchase, then why would any teacher want to choose another publisher's text? Thus the quality of one book, tied to a learning management platform, makes it that much easier for a department/teacher/school to make Pearson the publisher of choice for other books. Got it? When you choose Pearson, you buy into the entire Pearson mega-system.

One problem with this system is that the books in question are not always available cross platform. When we were testing books last year, it became impossible to get a guarantee from the publisher that the books would work on all of the devices we expected to see in our BYOT environment. That is one problem.
End Interlude

Back to the story.

This parrot and I are now besties

Turns out that the Biology textbook, Miller and Levine's BIOLOGY, came with a code. This is not the typical "student gets a code in an envelope with their book" type system. This is a code for the teacher. The teacher logs into what we'll call Pearson Database ALPHA with this code. They create classes and from the classes, a student code is generated. The teacher then (comes directly from the instructions that were emailed with the code) distributes the classroom code to those students who can prove that they have purchased the code. One method to check this consumer eligibility was to match the student with a list of "people who have purchased the book" -- which may or may not be a name similar to the student! If the name cannot be matched, they are not to give the code.

Just to clarify, the way that this is SUPPOSED to work is:

1. teacher receives access code
2. teacher creates account with code and sets up at least one course
3. teachers generates a single student code for all students
4. teachers USES CLASS TIME to play bookstore manager/accountant/distribution clerk rather than focusing on the task at hand, which, we hope, is TEACHING!

This is a waste of teacher time, class time, and student time. It makes the final steps of this profit-making venture part a teacher's classroom responsibility for no discernible student or classroom benefit. In fact, if a student is rejected by the teacher for not making the list (or not realizing Aunt Sally purchased the textbook), it could alter the teacher-student relationship from day one. If a student has to explain that she is on the list as a student who receives books as part of financial aid, the subsequent embarrassment could change the teacher-student relationship.

The way it is SUPPOSED to work is insane.

The code did not work.

After contacting the @mbsbooks, our 3rd party distributor, the teacher received another code. 

The code did not work.

When the @pearson support number was called by our teachers, they were told that the problem was that we purchased through a 3rd party and not directly from @pearson.

Interlude: What So Wrong with Pearson?

This is a default justification that we have heard for 4 years. We first heard it when we were told that the only way to receive "supplemental" language materials was by direct purchase. We were told this despite having e-mails from Pearson stating otherwise (pre-sale). We were told this when local sales reps could not comp. teacher's editions (a common practice in education).

Here is the thing. Local sales reps make commission (or magic-fairy-dust-points or whatever) based on sales. I completely understand the frustration in having to spend time and effort selling to schools that don't improve their balance sheet in the end. We do not expect the same level of go-to support unless we are told that it will be offered (and we have been told that) But...

Pearson makes the choice to sell through 3rd parties. It is in their interest to do so. If my teachers have a clear understanding of will and will not be forthcoming as a result of using MBS, they can decide accordingly. What happens, in writing, is a promise of one thing pre-sale and a lack of follow-through post. We chose the Pearson sold eText through our distributor because it was available and we expected it to work. 

End Interlude

We slowly and calmly explained that the code we received, even the first one, did not come from MBS, but was a code given to us from Pearson (as if the codes could be generated by MBS for use on a Pearson system?), We were moved, just as slowly, up the support chain.

Finally, after frustrated teachers: "I had no idea that it was going to be this complicated", frustrated department chairs, "We have to use this book. They have us over a barrel.", frustrated 3rd party sales reps. "They must have a code that will actually work!", one of our teachers received a code that let her access Pearson Database ALPHA (Turns out the first code was for Pearson Database BETA which is used for the Chemistry book, no clue what was wrong with the second code).

The teacher created her account. The teacher generated the student code.

The student code did not work.

More phone calls. More teeth gnashing. More MBS vs. Pearson rhetoric.

On Day 6 of school, with yet another code, students were able to successfully open their laptops, surf to a website, enter a new teacher-generated code, create a user account, and, if the pop-up blocker was off and they were not using Internet Explorer (script error)...open their Biology Textbook.

whew.

...but it didn't open on Tablets

End Part I

Part II is now posted

Questions and Cold Chills: A BYOT Advocate's Initial Reaction to iBooks2

I am hesitant to write this blog entry so early with so many unanswered questions, particularly since the topic itself is going to potentially open me up to flamebait, but I figured that I would use what influence I have to start the ball rolling. As I have said before, it is time for educators to start demanding the tools we need to improved education through technology. (thanks to my fellow debate coach, no-twitter kantz, for encouraging me to get this one posted sooner rather than later).

Today Apple announced another foray into education with the release of iBooks2 and its related software iAuthor for OSX (Lion). With this announcement came a lot of promise and potential, but a lot of unanswered questions. Some of these questions need to be answered quickly before we as educators find ourselves with a potentially expensive and educationally unpleasant reality (netbooks, I am looking at you).

The announcement: Any iOS user will be able to download iBooks2 and access textbooks that have massive multimedia potential, replace the weight of gigantic textbooks, and cost...wait for it ...$14.99 or less. On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer boon to the educational world. Add the fact that educators can use the tools to create their own content, and this seems like gold. And yet, the more I think about it, the colder the concept leaves me.

Not the economic boon that it seems:
The first thing the twitter-feed began howling about (after the shiny and the pretty) was the price. While I agree that it would be refeshing to see the publishers forced to lower prices in the face of an ebook juggernaut, that is NOT what is happening here (in fact, the juggernaut that WAS doing that so well was Amazon Pre-iPad. It wasn’t until the “set your own price, we’ll take 30%” iBooks deal with publishers that you saw kindle books go over $9.99).

High School Textbooks (notice that the iBooks2 announcement was NOT college?) are by and large purchased by schools for multiple years. Students pay a rental fee on textbooks (sometimes subsidized by the government). Any guess on how much publishers make per year on a book? somewhere between 15 and 17 dollars. So, depending on the book, the publishers save money on printing, distribution, shipping, warehousing, etc. and just take the 70% of their cut of $14.99. Nice deal for them. Nice deal for Apple. No real loss for families.

But once we realize that this is not a gamechanger brought about by twisting the arms of the publishers to let go of profits, this whole model begins to look different.

In the world of books, Content is King
Did everyone catch the selection that was released today? somewhere between 8 and 12 books depending on how you count the DK publisher books that were announced and the oh-so-pretty-but-oh-so-incomplete LIFE ON EARTH. Forget about the financial savings, you cannot even run a single schedule on those books, let alone a school. How many books will be available by the beginning of the 2012-13 school year?

Will the supporting publishers, of which much was made that they are responsible for 90% of all textbooks, be making their entire catalog available? Not Likely.

Aside: When we began investigating ebooks for Brebeuf Jesuit, we were stone-walled by a publisher (who claimed they were “leading the way” in ebooks) because the textbook which our math teachers preferred would NEVER be digitized. It was just kept in circulation because a lot of teachers felt it was a high-quality book...They would much rather us buy one of two other options that would be digitized.

If schools and corporations go all-in with the iPad solution, imagine the pressure that will be brought to bear on teachers and departments to go with the book that does not create issues of inventory, storage, etc. Quality of the text, appropriateness for curriculum and pedagogy, etc. will take a backseat to “but its not available on the iPad.” This was already beginning and now it seems a lock.

The second selection issue that arises in my mind is the grey area between advanced high school texts and college textbooks. The book distributor that our school uses is working on a cross-platform (with android, iphone, and HTML5) e-reader that will have about 40% of our booklist available by the start of next school year. But these eBooks follow the more common college model of limited access licenses for less cost than a new paper-book. Those are two VERY different pricing models that do not necessarily coexist (remember, the college textbooks have single-user costs closer to the total cost of the high-school book model).

Content Creation vs. Intellectual Property
I am a huge advocate of flushing SOPA, ProtectIP, and the congressional sponsors who refuse to learn about the consequences of their blind actions away like bad refuse. But I also teach my students about the importance of copyright and intellectual property. I teach them to give credit to sources. I proclaim the harbor of educational fair use. I help teachers envision a virtual website (or wiki or blog or eBook) that collects public domain documents in an effort to increase primary source research AND kick the textbook habit. Teachers (not just students) violate the ethics of intellectual property knowingly and unknowingly all the time. iAuthor is powerful, but where is the corresponding responsibility to ensure accuracy, responsibility, and intellectual credit.

Further, I don’t think teachers have the time and space now to effectively curate the information available on the web and elsewhere with any kind of regularity. I cringe at the idea that this will be presented as an additional expectation of teachers, particularly if it exposes them to the kind of scrutiny that our government seems all to willing to pass into law.

Creating a Nurturing Environment for Competition
I don’t think we are getting a straight answer yet (admittedly, its only been like 10 hours) about the exclusivity agreement that Apple is making people sign. It is completely reasonable that if you use the iAuthor tool, that the book goes to iBooks. I am more disturbed by the possibility that presence in the iBooks store means exclusivity from all e-book alternatives. Based on information coming out now, although still with murky wording, the exclusivity agreement is locked to the files that are created by iAuthor (even if that file is distributed, maybe, through a different channel). Thus, a publisher can still choose to create a kindle edition of the book, a KNO version of the book, etc. Whether they will want to take this extra step is going to be up to educators and parents and students. If we roll over and let the publishers and the distribution channel decide format for us, then we have to be satisfied with the result. For my part, I want competition.

I want Kno and Kindle and iBooks to all have the same book competing in this marketplace. I have been  tremendously impressed with the early tests of MBS’s Direct Digital (formerly Explana): this cross-platform (HTML5, iOS, Android) system includes single swipe highlighting, multi color, notetaking, export of notes into Word orPDF format), and offline accessibility. I love the socialization features (collaborative underlining, tweeting out passages) that Kindle introduced last year. I want to see prices drop and cross-compatibility of platforms and other distinguishing selling points. I want each publisher and distributor constantly one-upping on features and not suing each other (I can dream). I want a student who prefers to read on a 7” tablet to have that option (note: my BYOT partner @40ishoracle downloaded the environmental science book -- not even iOS exclusive...it’s iPad only).

The digital textbook market is still in its infancy (heck, ebooks are really just now toddlers). We need systems that nurture competition so that the best and the brightest ideas are allowed to compete. If we allow book-exclusivity to force the choice of technology at the school, district, or individual level, we could end up with what a single company determines is best for us.

Heck, I’m not even sure I want that corporation to be Google, and they “give” stuff away.

There has been and will be a lot written about this development. Here are two that i have found helpful:

• http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/kno-apple-fight/
• http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/ibooks-2-lets-authors-set-textbook-prices-in-exchange-for-apple/