Skip to main content

Do you have a reader?

In mid-January PEW for the last few years has been running a survey to find out about people having an ereader or a tablet. To me it always looks like geometric growth, in other words, we have moved out of Chris Anderson's long tail concept and are now in the "mainstream," with ebooks and tablets. Over the last three years, each year the number of tablets in use have just about doubled, from 5% in 2010, to 10% in 2011, and now 19% in 2012. And ereaders are pretty much the same (10% in 2011 and 19% in 2012). I also think that when you put readers and tablets together it becomes even more impressive, as of January 2012 it is estimated at 29% of adults have either a tablet or a reader. Then of course there are people like me, who have multiples of each that we work and experiment with (although PEW never calls me). I know to many when they read numbers like 5%, they thought it was no big deal, it's a rarity, but that is hard to continue to say when numbers become something like a third of the population.  Also as Penn & Zalesne stated in their book Microtrends, "In today's mass societies, it takes only 1 percent of people making a dedicated choice - contrary to the mainstream's choice - to create a movement that can change the world" (2007, xv).  Well ebooks have now gone far beyond that 1% concept, look around and you will notice something that is in use by 19% (approaching 1/5 of the adult population), people around you have ebooks and are reading them.

(image source: http://wirelessandmobilenews.com/2012/01/tablet-ownership-doubles-due-kindle-fire-prices-ownership-wealthy.html)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
7 comments
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more