Is there an electronic textbook in your future? I am sure you are all familiar with e-learning or distance learning and technology but a new chapter is now being written. A new technological innovation called Online Textbooks promises to lessen the burden of learning, both literally and physically by eliminating book bags and backaches.

The electronic textbook is a fairly new development in education but a few schools are now considering them as an alternate to traditional classroom texts.

Textbooks were a $7.500,000,000.- budget item for school districts across the country in 2004. About 26% of that or $2,000,000,000.- was spent on new electronic textbooks and other digital teaching tools.

Six years ago there was hardly an electronic publishing industry in academia to speak of.

Now it’s many years later and hardcover textbook may be on a par with the dodo and they could disappear, as we know them, sooner rather than later.

Textbooks have become more expensive to produce, print, and to distribute. Many of today’s textbooks are soon out of date. With electronic publishing online textbooks can be updated as soon as newer information is discovered and made available as updates or replacements for the original text.

Supporters say that e-learning with electronic textbooks can improve a child’s learning skills by incorporating real-time multimedia training with audios and visuals right in the classroom.

Students will be able to participate in online class experiments using real interactive e-learning and without programming. Interactivity will engage them more in their studies and should promote and improve their interest in learning. E-learning and electronic books are valuable resources that can contribute to any student’s academic success and help close the achievement gap.

Publishers such as McGraw Hill are working closely with classroom teachers to develop applications, lesson plans and content that will work in classrooms and contribute to student learning and achievement.Most schools now have broadband access to the internet so using this as a teaching tool within the schools is not a problem. Not every kid has broadband access to the Internet at home, but a good 56kbs connection should be adequate until prices come down, as they surely will.

Having said this once an electronic textbook is downloaded from the internet to your computer, you should save it to your hard drive (respect all copyrights of course) and you will be able to read it whenever you want.