Watching and evaluating the rapid evolution of e-textbooks over the past few years has made me appreciate, more than ever, the inevitability of change. We have to be willing and able to adjust to technological advances and new approaches. And we are doing just that in making this the last edition of Digital Directions in print.
For the past several years, Education Week has made a steadfast commitment to expanding and improving our coverage of educational technology news and trends. That commitment began with the launch of the print version of the magazine in 2007, and has evolved in new and primarily digital ways to expand our editorial reach and give educational technology leaders and thinkers the quality coverage they need to help them tackle the technological challenges of today.
We have launched a host of ed-tech products and services in recent years, including the twice-monthly Digital Directions e-newsletter, which reaches about 100,000 readers; the Digital Directions online channel, a source for ed-tech news and trends that is updated regularly throughout each week; and our successful series of Education Week special reports about how technology is changing K-12 schools.
The DD online channel and e-newsletter as well as the special reports will remain a high priority and will continue to evolve and expand even as we develop new products and services to help readers learn how to use technology to improve schools. It’s worth noting, too, that we will continue to produce the print and digital versions of Technology Counts, our annual report about the state of educational technology in K-12 schools. That report continues to be a popular product, and we plan to incorporate more multimedia and interactive features into the digital versions of Technology Counts in the future. What’s more, ed-tech coverage that once appeared exclusively in the print issue of Digital Directions will now migrate to the pages of Education Week, further raising the profile of that coverage.
Our goal in ending the print magazine is to become more nimble, and in doing so, more useful to our readers. It is not just a good change, but a necessary one. It opens the door to exploring new ideas and approaches, which, ultimately, will push our ed-tech coverage to the next level.
