It’s not just a matter of keeping up with the times, Duncan said in
remarks to the National Press Club. It’s about keeping up with other
countries whose students are leaving their American counterparts in the
dust.

South Korea, which consistently outperforms the U.S. when it comes to
educational outcomes, is moving far faster than the U.S. in adopting
digital learning environments. One of the most wired countries in the
world, South Korea has set a goal to go fully digital with its textbooks
by 2015.

“The world is changing,” Duncan said. “This has to be where we go as a country.”

The transition to digital involves much more than scanning books and
uploading them to computers, tablet devices or e-readers. Proponents
describe a comprehensive shift to immersive, online learning experiences
that engage students in a way a textbook never could.

A student studying algebra might click to watch a video clip
explaining a new concept or property. If they get stuck, interactive
help features could figure out the problem. Personalized quizzes ensure
they’re not missing anything — and if they are, bring them up to speed
before they move on to the next lesson. Social networking allows
students to interact with teachers and each other even when school isn’t
in session.

Using digital textbooks, schools can save money on hard copies and
get updated material to students more quickly. School districts may also
be able to pick and choose their curriculum buffet-style. A district
might choose one publisher’s top-notch chapter on Shakespeare, but
follow it with another publisher’s section on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The
Scarlet Letter.”

But adopting digital textbooks isn’t as easy as a directive from
Washington. States set their own processes for selecting and purchasing
textbooks that match their needs.

Over the last two years, at least 22 states have taken major strides
toward digital textbooks, said Douglas Levin, executive director of the
State Educational Technology Directors Association. Until recently,
Levin said, states struggled to collaborate because each had its own
curricular standards, a particular burden for smaller states. That
burden has been eased now that 48 states and the District of Columbia
have adopted the Common Core standards, a set of uniform benchmarks for
math and reading.

“There are opportunities for the federal government to encourage states and districts not to reinvent the wheel,” Levin said.

A school district in Huntsville, Ala., launched an effort over the
summer to become the first district to transition fully to digital
textbooks. To do that, the district must first ensure every student has
either a laptop or a tablet computer. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown
signed a pair of bills in September aiming to make his state a national
leader in electronic college textbooks.

Still, many districts, already buckling from diminished budgets,
don’t have the bandwidth or the equipment to make digital materials
available to every student. That’s created a new challenge for the
educational publishing industry as it works to market products to
district across the technological spectrum.

“We haven’t produced anything that’s print-only in over three years.
One hundred percent of what we have is available to school districts
electronically,” said Vineet Madan, senior vice president of new
ventures for McGraw-Hill Education.

A central tension in the movement toward digital materials is what it
means for textbook publishers whose profits rely on replacing old,
worn-out textbooks with new ones. Yet to be seen is whether textbooks,
like music, will become easy to steal or copy without payment, or
whether the industry will find new ways to make money off of teaching
materials.