Digital textbooks come to all Australian students and schools

Much research on the introduction of educational technologies in the classroom has been fragmented, limited, concerned with evaluation and has ignored the severe difficulties faced in integrating ICT into the classroom. This research focuses on the long term introduction of digital textbooks into the Australian education system. Textbooks, teaching and learning kits and packages, websites and digital textbooks and materials produced by Australian commercial publishers and teacher authors are the most important teaching and learning resources in the Australian education system. The research analysed the entries into the Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing for a 20 year period 1993-2013. These awards represent a longitudinal snapshot of the types of educational resources used in schools. The research identified four phases in the introduction of digital resources into educational materials and classrooms a) a print phase 1993-1998 b) an ancillary and complementary phase 1998-2003 c) an online learning phase 2004-2008; and d) a digital curriculum phase 2009-2013. Digital textbooks have been introduced into the Australian education system only in the digital curriculum phase. The research is concerned with large scale educational systems and multiple educational actors within those systems. The research shows that new digital textbooks focus on out of school education as much as support for learning in the classroom.