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November 9, 2009

The Rise Of The E-Book | Cushing Academy leads the way in new tech adoption, but will anyone follow?

Photo/Charles Sternaimolo Tom Corbett, library director at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, holds an electronic reader called a Kindle. The school now has 8,000 fewer bound books and 68 electronic readers after a $100,000 tech investment.

Stand and watch the circulation desk at Cushing Academy’s library in Ashburnham and before long a student will come up and request to check out not a book, but a Kindle.

About 68 of the electronic readers, which retail for about $259, are distributed throughout the campus after the school’s headmaster, James Tracy, invested about $100,000 in the library and technology budgets to embrace a digital future in education. And the gizmos are so hot, they’re hard to find.

“I haven’t even been able to check one out yet,” said Katie Kasper, 19, a senior at the school.

In front of that circulation desk, hang three flat-screen televisions showing news stations and programs about emerging technologies. And there are more computer stations than there are book stacks, which are huddled in an isolated corner of the room.

Market Penetration

As the e-book industry continues to grow, some local educators see an opportunity for the technology in education. Others are not as enthused by the idea.

“Will e-readers have an application in education? Absolutely,” said Michael Welch, headmaster at Saint John High School in Shrewsbury. “Will a textbook ever lose its place in a classroom? I don’t think so.”

Forrester Research Inc. estimates that already 2 million e-books have been sold in the United States so far. Another 1 million are expected to be purchased this holiday season alone.

By the end of next year, there could be more than 10 million e-readers in the market.

While the industry is growing fast, it is still dwarfed by the electronic music industry, where Forrester estimates nearly 61 percent of the online population, or about 110 million consumers, have some sort of an MP3 player.

In the education industry specifically, companies have begun marketing e-textbooks to schools. This fall Amazon.com gave about 50 of its Kindle products out to students at seven different universities across the country.

“E-textbooks will be a killer application for our technology. We see these devices as allowing a student to take an entire library to class in their backpack,” said Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing for E-Ink Corp, of Cambridge, which makes the screens most e-readers use.

At Cushing Academy, Tracy has removed about 8,000 books from its once 20,000-volume library and is instead focusing library resources on subscriptions to electronic academic journals.

Tracy purchased 18 Kindles for administrators and staff to test out over the summer. After rave reviews, he ordered 50 more this fall. The school recently announced a donation of 100 more e-readers from a former student’s parent. Tracy wants 600 on campus in the coming years, one for each student and teacher. Tracy admits the approach is bold, but he said it will be the norm in a few years.

“What we feel we’re doing is to help smooth the roadway for everyone else to be second adopters,” Tracy said.

Cushing Academy has had steady enrollment in recent years of about 450 students and brought in $26 million in revenue in 2007. The school charges $42,850 for boarding students and $31,200 for day students.

The $100,000 investment this year has increased Cushing’s library offerings from 20,000 print volumes to a 5 million volume online library.

It’s what Tracy calls the “democratization of information.”

“I think eventually every school in the country is going to say, ‘Why do we keep buying these printed books that students are decreasingly using, that are just collecting dust?’” Tracy said.

“The students are going to electronic resources anyway; meanwhile we are warehousing books in these vast buildings at a tremendous overhead. The financials alone will drive schools to say, we can offer far more resources much more cheaply, and give students resources they will actually use.”

Spreading The Word

Some schools are optimistic about the opportunities advances in technology, such as e-readers, can have.

Tracey Leger-Hornby is the assistant vice president for library services at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the private college in Worcester.

She’s excited about one day integrating electronic readers into the library.

“But, the logistics of distribution has not yet reached a point where it’s practical,” she said.

While there are dozens of different e-readers on the market ranging in price from $199 to $1,000, they do not all display the same format of e-books, or the digital texts of printed books.

Plus, she said, some of the e-readers do not have color screens and do not display graphs and charts as well as a printed book. One day she expects the price of the e-readers to decrease and the features they offer to increase, at which time the e-readers could make a good investment.

“I just don’t think we’re quite there yet,” she said.

Some private schools do not have e-readers circulating around campus, but have made a commitment to using digital textbooks.

Worcester Academy’s middle school program, wherever possible, uses online textbooks as opposed to the traditional print textbooks.

It costs about 75 percent less and gives students access to interactive material. Plus, it means students don’t have to carry around heavy textbooks, said Neil Isakson, director of external communications for the 6-12th grade boarding and day school in Worcester.

Molly Ingram, director of communications for St. Mark’s School, a private boarding high school in Southborough, isn’t as convinced about the e-readers, such as Kindle, or Barnes and Noble’s new product, the Nook.

Ingram values having students who are researching a term paper scouring through the stacks of a library searching for the book that has the information they need.

“How many times have you been in a library, looking at a shelf, and you take down 10 books, flip through them, read the jacket and the chapter headings until you find the one you need?” she said. “I can’t make those determinations based on a title and a description online.”

Ingram said while there may be a larger volume of texts available in an e-reader, “more isn’t always better.”

“If I have 5,000 post World War I economy books that come up from a search, how do I know which one to chose?” she said.

Steve Clem, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of New England, said Cushing is a vanguard in the industry.

“I don’t know how many people will follow him,” Clem said. “I don’t see it, at least in the near future.”

Clem said cost, reliability, and access to information remain questions he has about whether the technology is “the better way to educate.”

Private schools, in general, at least seem interested in the technology.

Myra McGovern, director of public information for the National Association of Independent Schools, said private schools in the country are watching the e-book industry very closely.

“Schools around the country are always looking for new ways to deliver curriculum, particularly in ways that appeal to and work for digital native students,” she said.

As the technology continues to evolve she expects more school to explore how e-readers can be integrated in their classrooms.

But, she said the technology will supplement, not replace printed text.

“I don’t think it’s ever going to be one or the other exclusively,” she said.

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