Bring your own device...

If we could decide on a base format, such as EPUB, then we could instead of buying textbooks, just set a textbook DRM to one year, and then lend digital textbooks to students using their own devices. The idea of students using their own devices could open up lots of opportunities and savings for school systems. Yes, I'm sure that some student's wouldn't have their own device, but there the school could lease or check out ones to the students who don't have their own. As a non-tax or deductible item parents could purchase ebook devices for their students - perhaps at a discount, and then use them in schools. Schools wouldn't have to purchase an ebook device for every student, just those who were unable to get their own. I'm pretty sure also that as the devices become more available and customization occurs (skins and such) that more students would want to get their own, instead of the school issued one. I believe that cell phones could be a proof of concept tool. Right now most high schools find that cellphones are at about 90-100% saturation, every student has one. A large number of those are already smart phones, such as the iPhone, which already can be ebook devices. This idea could indeed bridge the tech gap between schools and home, actually opening up opportunities for both.

Ariz. district considers bring-your-own-technology policy
District officials in Scottsdale, Ariz., are considering allowing students to bring their own mobile devices to school to give students more access to technology for learning purposes. "For many students, they have much more access to technology at home than at school, and this would be one way to bridge that gap," district technology official Tom Clark said. However, concerns over security, infrastructure and appropriate-use policies must be addressed before such a policy can be implemented, he added. The Arizona Republic (Phoenix) (7/13)

Comments

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.
The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking (to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be effective in highlighting it should be a kind of metacognitive approach of sifting or filtering to identify the important content…

Google Maps

An exciting time today, as I was riding my bike to work, I saw the Google Maps Car driving by. You may be wondering what the Google Maps car has to do with ebooks, but often books have maps and Google Books has lots of books with Google Maps developed from extracting the locations from the text. This kind of mapping got me so excited that myself and Jerome Burg wrote a book on using digital mapping with books. But the car reminded me that these maps are out there just waiting for you to start using them. For example if you go to Google Books, and you are reading Vern's Around the World in 80 Days, look in the About this Book section, and then scroll down to see if the book has a Places mentioned in this book... component.

In one class I copied the map from Google Books and then we put it on the wall, so that as we read the book, we tracked where we were in the story on the wall map. One warning though, for some reason the books with maps in Google Books seems to randomly change fr…

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 6 - Taking Note

The process of taking notes, makes reading that much more of an active process and will aid in comprehension and retention. The addition of your own personal notes are usually easier to understand and remember than textbook material. As a student reads the textbook, he or she may not remember all of that they read when they have finished - this is especially true of very dense texts. But, if a student reads the information and also writes down notes about what he or she is reading at the same time, then that extra step reinforces that information and improves retention. So one of the best ways to retain information you are reading it is to take notes while you are actually reading it, for print books these notes were usually written in the margins of the text and so were called margin notes.

The taking of margin notes is a strategy that focuses your attention on important information from the textbook, novels, or articles that you are reading. Because it involves tagging key words or …

eBook News

Search This Blog