For years, recycling has been a keyword in the worldwide push to preserve the planet. Randy Merriman seeks to take the same green approach to an environment that has been traditionally black and white: publishing.
As the director of business development for Follett Digital Resources, Merriman's goal is to get more publishers to see their products not as one-use-only textbooks, but as educational content that can be reused and repurposed in digital formats such as CDs and eBooks and made more accessible through MP3 players, cell phones or other digital devices.
On March 24, at the Publishing Business Conference and Expo in New York City, Merriman presented methods to help more publishers enhance products and increase revenue in a session titled "Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle: Content Strategies to Strengthen Your Fiscal Environment."
"Publishers are producing more digital products in part because there's a demand for it," he said. "In the K-12 market, the use of online and the use of digital curriculum products is much more integrated into day-to-day teaching than it was a few years back."
In the past, he said, many publishing companies spent a lot of money tagging content in databases and spreadsheets, but did not know what to do with it afterward. But in the last few years, advances in technology have made it easier than ever to turn print-based content into digital formats.
For example, Lycea, a Follet platform designed specifically for educational publishers, allows publishers to create, manage and deploy digital and online products. With modules and tools already created in the software, publishers can take print-based content and convert it to an xml format to be reused in digital delivery.
Publishers can store content, which can then be updated or modified more efficiently to fit state standards. The software also contains prebuilt modules that allow for interactive games, maps and online assessments -- true and false questions, open-ended essays, fill-in-the-blanks -- to help educators tailor their instruction to suit various learning styles.
"Online assessments make content interactive as opposed to static," Merriman said. "They have the ability to deliver content and instruction in a manner that is appropriate to that type of learner. When people talk about personalized instruction, that's what they're talking about."
In the same way that the software can help personalize individual instruction, it helps publishers modify content to specific markets. The prevalence of the digital media depends on the specific problems and needs of a given market, Merriman said.
But with all this talk about digital content, will textbooks ever go out of style? With 20 years experience in the K-12 publishing industry, Merriman doesn't think so. School districts have made large investments in purchasing printed textbooks, and many teachers are too familiar with the format to forego it. Plus, he added, there's just something about holding a book.
"Online and digital products can do things that print can't," he said. "But can a digital or online product really replace that experience of the kid having that tactile sensation?"
Instead, Merriman said, the question is not which form will prevail, but how online and digital products can coexist in the education environment.
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