Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Anyway, I think we won't begin to see dominance of the e-book until public schools adopt e-books rather than p-books. It will be that generation who learns to read for school and for pleasure on a reader who will finally cause the death of the p-book. Sadly, once again our public schools -- elementary, middle, and high -- hold the key to a major generational attitude change.
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That's a distinct possibility, but I don't think it's the only likely one.
True, the younger generation may not read books as much as we do... but they do read, mostly glossy specialty books and periodicals. A reader that could optimize this experience--say, through high-resolution color displays, automatic download of subscription material, the ability to either save entire books and libraries, or "clip and save" articles and photos as desired, etc--could become the "must-have" device of every kid, and propel them into dedicated readers before the schools have had a chance to implement a reader-based system of their own.
Schools have been slow to react to new technology (such as cellphone use in classes, and classwide computer use), but often prove able to work with it over extended time. That's why I expect the schools to develop a system using dedicated readers,
after the kids already have theirs.
Most likely it will be an optional-choice system (i.e., if you have a reader, you can do this thing, and make this easier/save money... or if you don't, continue to do it the old way) that will take advantage of the readers out there, and if done properly, encourage parents to get readers for their children who don't yet have one. Eventually, it will be assumed that all kids have readers, either self-bought or issued by the system in some generic form, and future school systems will base their learning systems on that supposition.
Mind you, this would be a slow process... and probably wouldn't impact the generation that's hitting kindergarten right now... but I think it would happen faster than allowing the school system to push readers on kids and promote their use.