eTextbooks needed

This kind of research doesn't surprise me. Instead it is just a reinforcement of things that I have found, students today are ready for the switch to digital textbooks. To me the hold is because of two factors. First is the paradigm shift necessary in faculty to change from paper based text to digital. This is also been shown in other research that found that students were much more aware of digital options for textbooks than faculty (other research also showed that faculty were unaware of the current pricing of the texts that they used). Faculty need to start going beyond the book company rep that shows up with sample texts and start looking for themselves if they are also to start incorporating open source texts too. The second issue is systematic, until faculty start experiencing digital textbooks, they won't be using them with their students, and a desktop computer isn't the ideal for such use. We need faculty to start using devices like tablets and ebook readers, so that they understand how these texts can be used. So support is necessary from administration to help encourage faculty to change to such a system. We cannot make effective schools when students see us going out of our way to use tools that are not as effective as others. I know that it can be difficult, but as one principal that I had said, "that's it, if they can't do email, they can't work here" - at times we just have to make the change.

Is the iPad Ready To Replace the Printed Textbook?
Students would be ready to buy their own iPads for use on campus if more of the electronic textbooks they needed were available, according to surveys out of Abilene Christian University.

After trying out the Apple iPad for a short period--about three weeks--three out of four college freshmen said they'd be willing to purchase an Apple iPad personally if at least half of the textbooks they used during their college career were available digitally, according to the results of a classroom poll at Abilene Christian University.

Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels. I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support...

Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text. These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted. The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be ...

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 8: Textbook structure

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle...

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