Goodbye Spine Crushing Student Backpacks

Students take heart.  Heavy, expensive and quickly outdated textbooks may be on their way out.  You can throw away those bulky text books and merely stick a flexbook in your pocket.  Just ask Michael Gorman at 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning:

So… what is a FlexBook?  They may be best described as customizable, standards-aligned, free digital textbooks for K-12 education. FlexBooks are customizable textbooks that teachers can use online,via  flash drives, CD’s, or as printed books. Teachers can even share FlexBooks with other educators and they can also customize them to fit their students, locality, standards, and current events. They contain high-quality online materials that are aligned with national and state textbook standards. Since FlexBooks are online  they are kept  up to date much more easily than printed textbooks. Teachers can use the books as they are provided by C-K12, use only parts of them, or add their own materials along with other content from the web. By now I am sure you understand the word “flex” in Flexbook. This unique flexibility made possible by digital technology allows for adding or deleting of  material (including graphics and videos), adjusting the difficulty of the language, and making any other changes students may need. Imagine teachers providing the valuable handouts, readings, videos, pictures, and sound bites they have always used and including these pieces in the textbook, or should I say Flexbook!.  Best of all FlexBooks are free, so  teachers can modify the FlexBook each time they find something that works better in their classrooms.

 It appears there's much more to FlexBooks than simply taking a load off our kids backs.