School text books

[anamardoll]

I would have loved e-textbooks when I was in college. I have a bad back and lugging those books around -- even just getting them home from the college store!! -- was terribly hard for me. Anything that helps improve accessibility is a plus in my opinion.

[Namekuseijin]

For children, still a ways off: should be something definitely slim and sturdy at the same time. But for college and university students, I think it's a very close reality. Specially with one of these and such similar. Read, make notes, sketch, do math on the calculator, record the professor giving his lecture while you sleep, etc...

[justapuppy]

Yeah, as a current student I study a lot away from home. The sooner ebook versions are available (at a respectable cost) the better. The good news is my university library is on track to have ebook versions available to download onto Ereaders by the start of next academic year. All being well!

[jersysman]

I took various courses that had ebooks. Here are my concerns:

1. Could not take notes (highlight entries). Some allowed, but they were not portable among different computers.

2. Had to sit in front of computer for long hours. I could not read in front of a computer as long as I could from a DTB.

3. If it had any fold-out charts or illustrations, those were extremely hard to navigate through.

Now a lot of these can be fixed if they can be loaded on an ereader. However, the ereader will have to be big enough to fit a larger screen because better textbooks have charts, illustrations, tables, etc. that are usually larger than the average size of an ereader.

Still, holding a larger ereader for the amount of time needed to read and study from can get rather cumbersome.

It is a really good idea, but it still needs better devices and better implementation to replace text books. IMHO.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by jersysman

I took various courses that had ebooks. Here are my concerns:

1. Could not take notes (highlight entries). Some allowed, but they were not portable among different computers.

2. Had to sit in front of computer for long hours. I could not read in front of a computer as long as I could from a DTB.

3. If it had any fold-out charts or illustrations, those were extremely hard to navigate through.

Now a lot of these can be fixed if they can be loaded on an ereader. However, the ereader will have to be big enough to fit a larger screen because better textbooks have charts, illustrations, tables, etc. that are usually larger than the average size of an ereader.

Still, holding a larger ereader for the amount of time needed to read and study from can get rather cumbersome.

It is a really good idea, but it still needs better devices and better implementation to replace text books. IMHO.

these things are all minor and can easily be overcome. Books would have to be properly formated of course. But the first step is discussion and you have provided a very important first step. Highlights and notes are something that could be added if the ereadred manufactures allowed it. That said keep the ideas comming. Any suggestion pro or con is good. I am sure that these things can be all worked out quickly enough. Its not just converting a text to epub. Kobo has a kick ass zoom function that works very well this could be used easailiy enough on fold outs etc. Obvious and epub would be formated differently then a text book.

regards

jack

[Tome Keeper]

As a high school teacher I would have to say no. E-books do not provide enough flexibility for the classroom, nor do we have the money to buy e-readers.

I would support an e-book version available if you purchased the paper version, which would allow me to make sure all my students had a copy of the textbook to access at home.

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by Tome Keeper

As a high school teacher I would have to say no. E-books do not provide enough flexibility for the classroom, nor do we have the money to buy e-readers.

Interesting... As a middle school teacher, I would have to say yes. BUT, this is with my personal interpretation that the ereader be a tablet device capable of running apps (a certain fruity company is really pushing hard for this movement, and I'm in support, minus the device specificity). This is also predicated on my (naively idealistic) assumption that licenses for digital textbooks would be sold at a slightly lower price than physical textbooks.

If you think about how much schools spend in in providing a book per student for at least four different subjects, with at least one new textbook adoption every other year (causing so many textbooks to be needlessly replaced) I think that a multi-function device/ereader would quickly hit the break-even point, particularly if the school could become semi-paperless (imagine the savings in lined paper, copied worksheets, and copy-machine maintenance).*

Regarding flexibility, I'm a bit confused. Students cannot annotate or highlight a textbook, but they could do that with an ereader. I'd consider that to be much more flexible.

I would give a figurative right arm to have our school adopt a 1:1 tablet/ereader initiative. The only things I suspect stopping it (our principal is quite forward-thinking) are the initial investment and the availability of district-adopted textbooks in digital formats (only 50% are currently available as such).


* I look forward to the day when we laugh about copy machines in school as hard as we currently laugh about ditto machines.

[odiakkoh]

From a luggage viewpoint I would say yes to e-textbooks. I didn't have lockers in junior high and we had to share lockers (if you got lucky, some didn't get one at all) in high school. You had 1 book for each class that you had to lug from school to home everyday. My classes all wanted a 1-2in binder per class so I had 4-5 binders, 5-6 textbooks and a trumpet on me during the school year. (class of 2005)

From a learning viewpoint, I don't think it should be one or the other. I think I would be fine with e-textbooks especially if it was available for viewing on an ereader along with the pc. I do know that some people I know would've struggled if only e-textbooks were available. If e-textbooks become mainstream I think schools should still have a decent amount of pbooks available for those who wish to use them.

[Namekuseijin]

slightly lower price?! Should be significantly lower price, for there's no costs whatsoever involved in the copying and distribution of ebooks: it is the inherent nature of digital goodies to be copied without degrade multiple times in very small time and distributed in the velocity of electric impulses. Contrast that with printing on paper, gluing, covering and then physically transporting the products throught the country!

I agree with the high school teacher that current ereaders are not flexible enough. School needs something akin to the eeeNote.

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

slightly lower price?! Should be significantly lower price, for there's no costs whatsoever involved in the copying and distribution of ebooks:

Sure, those costs disappear, but those are insignificant in the grand scheme. Textbooks are expensive because of development (writing, revising, editing, images/graphs, layout, font organization, research, etc.... and again slightly differently for the teacher's edition); copying and distribution is a minimal portion of the entire cost. Sadly, just as in digital vs hard-copy literature, I expect that digital textbooks will be close to the same cost of hard-copy textbooks.

The primary benefits of digital readers will include annotating/highlighting, interactivity, public domain and freely-available resources, universal access (enlargement, color control, and read-aloud) and the possibility of creating a truly paperless classroom... but they won't include significantly reducing overall textbook costs.

[GreenMonkey]

Anyone try to write a book review or some other paper using ebooks? Or keep up in class with people flipping back and forth? It's pretty tough. I had a couple of ebooks last year for my history classes. I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It's slower.

If you had everyone on ebooks on the same kind of device, that MIGHT help as far as the in-class experience. At least epubs have page numbers.

For use in class, a paper book that you can quicky flip around and look for stuff is a lot more useful.

If we finally got an e-ink device with a pen that you could take notes in the book and you could take notes on...it might be a more viable choice.

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

If we finally got an e-ink device with a pen that you could take notes in the book and you could take notes on...it might be a more viable choice.

I'm not sure why it has to be eInk. I don't see many (read: any) students complaining about the screens on the computers or the iPod touches we have at school when they have the opportunity to use them. If anything, they seem to enjoy reading on e-devices more than printed paper.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by witeowl

I'm not sure why it has to be eInk. I don't see many (read: any) students complaining about the screens on the computers or the iPod touches we have at school when they have the opportunity to use them. If anything, they seem to enjoy reading on e-devices more than printed paper.

A tablet like device like the HTC Flyer with a pen for taking notes might be worthwhile too, if the battery life improved enough.

But running out of battery power in class would suck. With a standard LCD type tablet if you didn't remember to charge every day you could quite likely run out of power by the end of the school day.

[carpetmojo]

I'd support this, but expand it to cover later learning texts also - university stuff & on.
A major stumbling block here might be the relatively high price for physical texts - often a result of high volume of research and preparation times for authors, and the sometimes small market.
And, of course with a proviso they'd need to be cheaper than the originals, that could be another problem area.

Having said that, a lot of humanities subjects are on line via Gutenberg et al.

And I do agree that all readers need to be either more robust before they gain a bigger acceptance - or every reader come with it's own tailor-made student-proof hard case with shock resistance !

[Tome Keeper]

Originally Posted by witeowl

Interesting... As a middle school teacher, I would have to say yes. BUT, this is with my personal interpretation that the ereader be a tablet device capable of running apps (a certain fruity company is really pushing hard for this movement, and I'm in support, minus the device specificity). This is also predicated on my (naively idealistic) assumption that licenses for digital textbooks would be sold at a slightly lower price than physical textbooks.

If you think about how much schools spend in in providing a book per student for at least four different subjects, with at least one new textbook adoption every other year (causing so many textbooks to be needlessly replaced) I think that a multi-function device/ereader would quickly hit the break-even point, particularly if the school could become semi-paperless (imagine the savings in lined paper, copied worksheets, and copy-machine maintenance).*

Regarding flexibility, I'm a bit confused. Students cannot annotate or highlight a textbook, but they could do that with an ereader. I'd consider that to be much more flexible.

I would give a figurative right arm to have our school adopt a 1:1 tablet/ereader initiative. The only things I suspect stopping it (our principal is quite forward-thinking) are the initial investment and the availability of district-adopted textbooks in digital formats (only 50% are currently available as such).


* I look forward to the day when we laugh about copy machines in school as hard as we currently laugh about ditto machines.

I agree with your points but in my school, getting the kids near even a 10 year old computer is nigh-on impossible, I don't see us being able to afford so many e-readers or tablets. It would also introduce issues of where/who charges them, theft, messing about on them etc.

Our school spends very little on textbooks as class sets are expected to last 10-years + and we don't provide individual books. I believe many schools in England are in a similar position and the cost of buying 1000 odd e-readers plus licenses for at least 8 different year-group sets of textbooks in my subject alone would make e-textbooks currently unaffordable. Textbooks are also cheaper to replace than an e-reader/tablet should it get dropped, thrown etc.

By flexibility I was thinking of things such as flipping between different pages, using multiple textbooks, sharing textbooks (possible but with current screen sizes a pain), the display size on e-readers and quality of PDFs is variable and taking textbooks outside (though I guess this would be possible with e-readers).