My iPad still keeps revealing its potential to me. For example, right now I am on a cross country speaking trip doing PD in Missouri then Georgia… then North Carolina next week. Indeed, it’s been busy busy.

And when you are gonna be on so many airplanes, in so many hotels, in so many places, it’d be nice if you had a few of the following things with you.

• email
• gps system
• internet access wherever you were
• planner/calendar
• notepad
• books, books, books,
• a few movies
• some podcasts
• an immense music library
• magazine articles of interest
• daily newspaper
• my contact list
• a coupla games

Do I need to go on?

My iPad really is incredible. To be able to take so much content with me in one so easy-to-navigate device… well, like I said, the thing still keeps revealing its potential to me.

It’s changed the way I plan and pack for travel. For kids today, this may seem like an “Of course you can do that with it” experience. But for me, who remembers what it was like to have to choose between which content I could and could not take with me on the road, well… it’s is just crazy crazy.

And it even lets me blog, too. Whouldda thunk?

One question that has longed bothered me about all of the conversation regarding having one set of national standards for all American schoolchildren is, “If we are going to have standards at all, why should these standards be different from state to state?”

Forget the merit of the standards chosen and the text exemplars cited in the latest information released about the Common Core Standards Initiative. (I know, hard to do.) But can anyone explain the benefit to me of Michigan have one set of English Language Arts standards, Georgia having another and then Texas having yet a third?

And this goes on across all fifty states.

Do any two states at all even share the exact same set of standards? Not any two neighboring states like Mississippi and Arizona? Okay, my geography is off — but that’s because I went to school before there were national standards! (Okay, I am straying here…) I think national standards are the solution for this problem. What is the benefit, especially when American families are more transient than ever moving from state to state, of having different content standards in the same content area across the entire country?

Now before I get pounded with criticism of why national standards are bad, I feel the need to say I hear and find some merit in the arguments against them… and am not even going to try and weigh in on those right now. It’s a different question I am asking.

(And yes, I get the nationalizing education is bad for America argument. And yes, I do hear the complaints about how this is a blatant power grab for centralized control of all our classrooms by politicians. And yes, I do see the link as to how this might actually prove to be a chance for monopolistic corporate behemoths to swoop on in and milk every last dollar from the taxpayer kitty with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy — though I think textbook companies are sweating right now much more so than they are jubilant… more on that at another time. All reasonable, solid points to debate and consider for sure.)

But can someone please make a case for why it is better for individual states to have their own individual sets of standards when the gaping holes between the degree of rigor between some states is so wide, and the language used to describe the same basic ideas from state to state is so varied, that to look at all of them on a kitchen table with a bird’s eye perspective would simply leaving you scratching you head?

Forgetting the political implications of it all (and I know, if education is anything, it’s political… though silly me thought it was supposed to be about the kids) why is a state to state to state standards system better than a national standards system?

In essence, am I missing something or doesn’t this put us all on the same page so that Florida doesn’t value metaphors more than Illinois values relationships between main and subordinate characters in a text while Nevada finds value in etymology?

If you agree with standards-based education, the Common Core Standards Initiative seems kinda logical. If you do not agree with standards-based education then certainly, you are in no way going to be a fan of this. But if you agreed with standards-based education yet think that the content standards for math, English, science and so on should vary depending on which side of the state border you happen to be standing on, I’d love to hear your reasoning.

I am hopeful. I am fearful. I am exhilarated. I am mortified. Why? Because the first in what is sure to be a long line of heavy salvos is being fired at the textbook industry with Amazon’s new Kindle, designed especially to take on the status quo in the textbook market.

I am hopeful because the entire textbook industry needs to change. Simply put, it’s outdated, outmoded, and terrifically expensive to the point of being sheer lunatic.

I am fearful because I know there is going to be years of iniquity which will befall America while some classrooms smoothly make a transition to the digital delivery of educational content while other schools operate like the modern day classrooms which still use cassette players in class. (Don’t laugh. A heck of a lot of schools still use cassette players for instruction. Forget CD’s — which are already a outdated medium of content delivery — they are using CASSETTES!)

I am exhilarated because open source can’t be too far behind meaning that the stranglehold these behemoth corporations have on our classrooms is going to crack. The vice grip such a small group of folks have had over hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students in terms of curriculum is sheer foolishness and if they are looking for someone to help shovel dirt on this grave so it can be buried faster, I — as well as a heck of a lot of other teachers I know — would be glad to lend a hand. Textbooks, in their current incarnation, are pretty weak and all the best teachers I know use them as supplements at best — and never (like me) at worst.

And I am mortified. MORTIFIED!!

Why? Because when I read quotes like the one below by a guy named Bruce Hildebrand, the executive director for higher education for the Association of American Publishers, which represents several big textbook companies, I am shocked by the airs he puts on.

He said, and I quote, “… publishers are “absolutely agnostic” about how their content is delivered, so if costs like printing and shipping were removed, the companies could charge less.”

Bull pies!! As my friends in Kentucky might say, that dog just don’t hunt.

Agnostic? I mean come on folks. The textbooks have been drinking at the public trough of education funding for decades. They are multi-multi-multi-million dollar businesses. And how’d they get to be that way? By holding an iron grip on the market. If a teacher wants chapter 3, 4, and 8 she has to buy chapters 1,2,5,6 and 7 and there are literally less than 10 options whereby they can turn to shop. (We all know that’s it’s pretty much down to 3 big textbook publishers right now but I’ll grant them a wee bit of latitude and avoid going down the road of hurling accusations of collusion at them — they have enough problems.)

Well, not anymore bay-bee!!! If I only want the content of chapters 3, 4 and 8 then that’s all I am going to have to buy. And the amount of people offering high quality material on how to effectively and intelligently teach Chapters 3, 4 and 8 is going to balloon immensely. I mean why should I only turn to you, Mr. Textbook Publisher?

Because you have been so good to us throughout the years? Because when times were financially tough you went easy on our purse strings? I am not so sure how much goodwill you have built up over the decades.

Don’t believe me that’ll I turn somewhere else or demand customization of my eduational items either? Maybe you ought to check out a small little phenomenon called iTunes which has taken me from having to buy every song on an entire album to now being able to buy only the specific tunes I want. (To wit, I cite the Bee Gees. I don’t want songs like Tragedy, I want tunes like Jive Talkin’ You Should be Dancing, and, of course, Staying Alive for those teacher lesson plans I create in my underwear every now and then while blow drying my hair to keep it real.)

And maybe I can finally stop having to pay for material that’s already in public domain, too. Really, how many times have the ninth grade English classes of America paid Textbook Company X for the play Romeo and Juliet? Think about the cash we have spent over the past 50 years. Well, guess what Mr. Hildebrand, that text is now free. (Always has been for you — now it is for us. Goodness, how much do I love the idea of not having to use my school funds to pay you for something which you yourself do not have to pay for when teachers at my school are being laid off due to low funds?)

But now, Mr. Agnostic, all you will be able to sell me are the accompanying study materials to R&J. This brings real competition to the game. Like have you seen the materials this little known group called the Royal Shakespeare Company offers? Or do a search on Web English Teacher for R&J? If they are offering all of this great stuff, can you go toe-to-toe with them? And even if you can, can you match their prices — which are sometimes totally free?

But you, a guy who presides over an industry that rakes in monster bucks selling 100 dollar per kid per subject area textbooks isn’t sweating the idea that schools which adopt these new Kindles might threaten your revenues?

Besides, don’t you still have to digitally develop all the content you plan to sell, make it customizable, individual, accessible and functional for e-commerce delivery? I doubt that’s an impending expenditure of a few clams against your bottom line, really I do.

But no, you are agnostic.

Well, what I think you are, if you have any common sense at all, is terrified. And rightly so. The world is changing and all the millions you have in the bank of our school money isn’t going to be able to stop this from happening.

With a little luck, maybe we’ll be able to hire a few teachers back with the cash we save, too. Oops, there go our free backpacks during textbook adoption season.

I think we can live with it.