Can an electronic textbooks be part of K-12 education?: Challenges, Technological solutions and Open issues

An electronic textbook (e-Textbook) is a digitized (or electronic) form of textbook, which normally needs an endorsement by the national or state government when it is used in the K-12 education system. E-Textbooks have been envisioned to replace existing paper-based textbooks due to its educational advantages. Hence, it is of paramount importance for the relevant parties (i.e. national and state governments, or school districts) to draw a comprehensive roadmap of technologies necessary for the successful adoption of e-Textbooks nationwide. This paper provides a brief overview of e-Textbooks and subsequently an extensive discussion on challenges associated with e-Textbooks in the pursuit of replacing traditional textbooks with e-Textbooks. This paper further provides an extensive review on how the challenges have been approached using existing e-Textbook technologies, such as multi-touch technology, e-Paper, Web 2.0 and cloud computing.