“K-12″ learning is the abbreviation used for kindergarten (K) that refers to education imparted to all classes right from Kindergarten up to 12th grade. This includes primary, middle, and high school education. Today, when digital transformation is taking over, schools are increasingly turning to develop online K-12 textbook solutions to deliver robust online learning options for seamless education delivery and long-term academic success.
What are digital textbooks?
Digital or online textbooks are simply digital renditions of the print book with more features. However, as compared to print books, a digital textbook is far more interactive and engaging. The online textbook is designed in a way keeping the modern tech-savvy learners in mind that addresses their new learning needs.
E-textbooks are usually developed with interesting features that help the students learn better and engage with the learning material more than traditional printed books. These online versions of the textbook have media-rich content including videos, animations, audios, etc which boosts the student’s learning process.
Need for online K-12 learning solutions
In the digital era, K-12 learning solutions usually encompass online learning material that is widely being adopted to supplement classroom teaching. The transition from physical textbooks to digital educational content & apps was already underway, but the sudden hit of the pandemic further accelerated the widespread adoption of digital textbooks.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools met unprecedented challenges and were compelled to deliver online learning, online textbook solutions for K-12 have become a great way to impart learning among the students.
Furthermore, developing online K-12 solutions are interactive in nature, which helps students understand better and boost their learning ability. The use of highly visual content, which includes audio files, visual files, graphics, quizzes, footnotes, etc. makes learning more interesting and ignites interest and engagement in learners’ minds.
Online textbook solutions for K-12 have educational content in the form of games, and interesting content by which students can easily relate to and motivate them to interact with the content and learn by doing. As online textbook solutions come with rich multimedia & immersive storytelling, it grabs the students’ attention and enables them to understand and learn in a better way.
Especially now, when the need for eLearning solutions is at its peak, these solutions are highly beneficial for teachers as they can use them as teaching aids to support their lessons and make the teaching process more constructive during remote learning.
Benefits of creating online pre-K-12 educational publishing solutions
Here are the top reasons why you should consider creating interactive textbooks for engaging K-12 students:
- Easy to develop solutions: With the availability of various PreK-12 ePublishing service providers, creating interactive textbooks is no more a complicated task. Outsourcing companies providing e-publishing solutions have the expertise and the latest tools to develop engaging ebooks in suitable layouts, as per your needs.
- Easy to publish content: By using digital publishing platforms, you can easily develop and publish your content in the desired formats and layouts. These publishing platforms like OneRead can help you preview your content to demonstrate what the final output would look like, and then you can finally publish your online textbooks. And the best part is, you can also correct the mistakes or make changes in the text after publishing, whenever required.
- Easy to deliver: Once published, you can easily make your e-textbooks available & accessible by the students. For this, you can opt for a content delivery platform that is compatible with different devices- be it a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.
- Low cost of production: As compared to print books, digital publishing is far more cost-effective. By leveraging pre-K-12 educational publishing solutions, you can substantially reduce your cost of production and cut down expenses for printing, transportation, warehousing, etc, which saves a huge amount.
- DRM Security: Online content is prone to security risks. However, to prevent any copyright issues or illegal downloading of textbooks, you can secure your e-textbooks with DRM. This ensures that only people with permission can access the content.
By keeping all these benefits in mind, you can create engaging e-textbooks for K-12 learners to deliver a great learning experience to students. But the question is how can you create interactive textbooks in order to engage K-12 students? Let’s find out…
How to create online textbooks that engage K-12 learners?
- Step 1- Create engaging textbook content: Content for online textbooks, can be made slightly different and more engaging with footnotes, audio files, video files, animations, etc. This requires you to create an interesting storyline backed with interactive elements. To make sure that your content is up-to-mark, you can also take help from ebook development companies who can aid you in developing & proofing textbook content.
- Step 2- Select the layout: Once your content is ready, the next step is to choose its layout. Depending on its subject, grade, media files, etc you can decide which layout you should go for, whether fixed or reflowable ebook format. Other than this, you also need to pay attention to the aesthetics of your digital textbook including the font style, font size, color, page border, etc. By using ebook creation software or platform, you can also choose from a variety of inbuilt templates, which you can tweak as per your requirements.
- Step 3- Develop a cover image: When developing educational books, you need to give importance to the cover image too as it gives out the first impression of your eBook. Make sure that your cover image is relevant and interesting. To develop your textbook cover, you can either design your own cover or go for an existing template, if available. You should make sure that your cover looks clear and attractive on all devices.
- Step 4- Add content and interactivity: You can now add a PDF or doc file to the ebook development software or platform, which will then be converted to an ePUB format. Alternatively, you can also write directly on the eBook creation software/platform. Once the ePUB file is ready, you can enrich the digital textbook with interactivity elements like videos, graphics, audio, animations, quizzes, etc. to create an immersive learning experience.
You can also add online assessments to monitor students’ knowledge. - Step 5- Add table of contents: Once your content is ready, the next step is to create the table of contents. This has to be done last. However, while creating a digital textbook creation process, the TOC is automatically created with all the topics corresponding to their respective page numbers. All you need to do is make sure that it is linked to the right pages.
- Step 6- Finally, preview & publish: After ensuring that everything has been done, it’s time to preview the final output before publishing and then finally, publish. This implies that your digital textbook is now ready to be distributed. But, at this stage, you must also take care of the licensing and distribution part. You can take professional help to ensure that your online textbook is efficiently published and distributed among your readers.
Also Read: How to Create an Online Interactive Workbook for Schools in A Few Simple Steps
Things to take care of while developing an online textbook
- Provide a smooth interface: K12 students today expect everything at a click of a button with ease. Make sure that your textbook is interactive and intuitive, which keeps the students engaged. Your interface must be easy-to-use, intuitive, and responsive.
- Add videos, hyperlinks & other media: To improve your students’ learning, interactive textbooks come to play. Having videos and hyperlinks embedded in the textbooks, your students can get the additional information and will help them understand better. Furthermore, you can add graphics, footnotes, audio files, etc.
- Provide updated content: The best part about online textbooks is that you can change or update your content whenever you want. As the syllabus may change every year. In order to provide K-12 students with the latest data, you can update facts, figures, and statistics when required.
- Focus on mobile learning: Now that students are using mobile devices more than ever, your online textbook solutions for K-12 should be compatible with different devices enabling students to access the files on the device of their choice. This will enable students the flexibility to access textbooks and learn anytime and anywhere.
- Create a digital library: Similar to a physical library, you can create a digital library where students go to find additional learning resources. This digital content library for K-12 students contains informative and easy-to-understand videos and text material for all their subjects.
Need professional help to develop online K-12 textbook solutions?
With 20+ years of experience, SunTec India provides innovative, high-quality online and blended education solutions, curriculum, and programs for publishers, schools, and enterprises. Our ebook conversion specialists create interactive and engaging digital books with features like text highlighting, audio narration, animations, embedded multimedia, etc., to boost the young learners’ reading experience.
To get in touch, write to us at info@suntecindia.com