Digital Content Adoption in the Pre-K-12 Publishing Market

Authors: Outsell Client Services, Client Services; Eduventures, Inc.

Application of digital content in schools is growing, but has not met the expectations caused by early market hype. Eduventures forecasts that the pre-K-12 digital content market will see modest growth through 2007. There have been pockets of success in some areas of the school market, particularly in digital reference and library services, but on average adoption of digital content in the classroom has been slow due to shrinking budgets, inconsistent school infrastructure, and the failure to convince teachers of digital content's value over printed materials.

Looking to the future, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates and products that are tightly integrated into the curriculum will drive more use of technology in schools. However, in order to take advantage of this market opportunity, publishers must continue to make the transition to web-based content delivery and continue to operationalize the requisite new business models.

This report will define the pre-K-12 digital content market and provide an overview of the key growth drivers and barriers to adoption in U.S. schools. Furthermore, it will describe many of the key business and distribution issues that publishers across the
three major market segments - basal, supplementary, and reference - have faced and will continue to face as they incorporate more robust digital content delivery strategies.