Another School Tries Out Digital Textbooks

[jasonkchapman]

This time it's Blyth Academy, a small private school in Toronto.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/arti...#&source=title

[dsvick]

Good initiative, thinking green, getting more technology into the kids hands... all good things. The only problem is that they are doing it with the actual textbooks, I hope they still have the paper versions available. Everyone learns differently and the dead tree versions are so ingrained it may be hard, especially for the older kids, to develop an affinity for the eReaders.

I know there was another school that just did this as well, but it was their lending library, novels and literature and such where there would not be as much need for note taking and getting instruction from them.

[Kali Yuga]

Sounds like a good plan, especially giving students the option to use paper if they really want (or for some reason need). I'm very surprised that they aren't switching fiction / novels to ebooks. The current crop of devices, especially the ones with smaller screens, are perfect for that type of texts.

Perhaps Sony will take the initiative put out a model optimized for the education market. I'm thinking attach a rugged case, maybe a couple of airbags...

[fugazied]

Is this happening much at college level? I know that academic publishers have obscene markups on their books and would be very resistant to cheaper e-book version. Back in the day I had to pay $60-80 for some academic texts. I paid $50 for an academic book that was 220 pages long!

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by fugazied

Is this happening much at college level?

Amazon is doing some pilot programs with DX's. In most cases, the big problem for college students is that annotating books is kind of weak. The other big issue is that it's very difficult to do a citation based on page number, so the profs often need to allow citations to ebook location instead. Not a big deal IMO, but it does require a change in an established process.

Not sure what the textbook prices are, but Amazon did announce the pilot programs in conjunction with getting a bunch of textbook publishers on board.

For what little my speculations are worth, I expect they'll be warming up for awhile. Once color eInk is out, Amazon (and who knows who else) will start making a real push into the education market. By then, the devices will be a little more affordable, and perhaps they can make them more rugged as well.

[LDBoblo]

It's good to get the trend going, and within a few generations of ebook reading devices, I'm confident that the hardware and software of reader devices will approach a state that is usable for higher academia. I'm not sure why they're going with textbooks now though, since that's a pretty big weakness of e-ink devices (along with scholarly journals and plate books), but I guess it needs to start somewhere.

Of course, there will be some people resisting the change, saying "but you can't get strong arms carrying an ebook!" Of course...when they're faster and color-capable, folks will put porn on them, which might temper the arm strength argument.

[Boston]

A Boston Globe article regarding the announced Kindle features for the blind/visually impaired mentioned that two of the universities testing the Kindle refused wider adoption until it better met the needs of blind students.

mobileread thread on Amazon's announcement:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=blind

Boston Globe article:
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...re_accessible/

[carlobee]

That's really great. Hope it would also turn out great for them!