Following the free

The Dec/Jan issue of Educational Leadership focuses specifically on “Learning in the Digital Age.” It has a great lineup of articles, including:

• Listen to the Natives by Marc Prensky
• The New WWW: Whatever, Whenever, Wherever by Tom March
• The Overdominance of Computers by Lowell W. Monke
• The Educator’s Guide to the Read/Write Web by Will Richardson
• Technology and Achievement: The Bottom Line by Harold Wenglinsky
• Going One-to-One by Mark Warschauer
• Foiling Cyberbullies in the New Wild West by Mark Franek
• Resources for Promoting Online Citizenship by Patrick James Jones
• The World of Digital Storytelling by Jason Ohler
• Tools for the Mind by Mary Burns

The issue has even more articles that look great too. Problem is, only subscribers to Educational Leadership have access to full-text online versions. You can buy an individual article for $3.00, but there is no way I am going to do that, and I bet fewer and fewer other people will either today and into the future.

Why would I reject out-of-hand purchasing an online article, even when it looks to be very high quality and worthwhile? It is because we are living in a flat world of digital curriculum characterized by an over-abundance of digital content. The old media mindset is, “Let’s charge people to read our stuff.” Personally for me that still works for print books, but not for most magazines or online resources. As tablet laptops become more ubiquitous, I predict it will become more common for people to read digital books as well. (For me currently, however, not having a tablet laptop, I am still much more comfortable curling up with a paper-based book that I can write in and highlight, or just enjoy as I want without relying on anything “electronic”…..) The MIT $100 laptop may serve as a major change agent encouraging more people to read digital books, and more digital content overall.

The new mindset is (and should be for Educational Leadership magazine and other print publishers): “Let’s give this away so the highest number of people possible will read and be influenced by these ideas.” That is a major paradigm shift for traditional publishers. I would submit Wired magazine as an example of a publisher that has made this transition well. The initial print version of the magazine comes out for subscribers only, but soon after that print release (I am not sure the exact delay, but it appears to be shorter than ever) most main articles from the issue are available in their web archive.

Edutopia published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and Technology and Learning are examples of education-specific magazines also following a similar model (give away digital article copies rather than charge for them.) Some T&L publications like eBooks require registration, but not payment. Interactive Eduator is example, although it is just published in PDF format and is not published monthly. (It also is published directly by a vendor, SmartTech Technologies.)

In our digital age overflowing with digital content, I think information consumers (and therefore publishers) will increasingly tend to “follow the free” when the quality of content is high. Educational Leadership publishers and others need to make this paradigm shift. I’d love to read their articles, but I’m not going to pay to do so.

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Inside and Outside Digital Sharing – 2016
• Sock Drawer Puppets: An Interview with Ashli Shockley – 2015
• Download & Use Vine Videos in iPad Media Projects – 2015
• Free Workshop in Oklahoma City Fri Jan 18: Creating Multimedia eBooks – 2013
• Oklahoma City PS Students: Enroll in Virtual Classes for Fall 2013 by Feb 8th – 2013
• Supplemental Oklahoma Rules for K-12 Online Courses – 2012
• Avoiding AT&T’s Ridiculous iPhone Data Fees by Switching to T-Mobile – 2012
• Is it right to decide to make your children famous? – 2011
• “Learning in a Networked World: For Our Students and For Ourselves #teach21esc16 – 2011
• Connected Learning Communities: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age #teach21esc16 – 2011