In a recent survey by LightSail Education of 475 educators about their school districts transition from paper to ebooks the following was found:
Concerning the migration
to digital books embraced by school and district leaders:
- Fifty-two percent want students
reading in digital books.
- Eight percent prefer paper books.
- Forty percent expressed no
preference for digital or paper books.
If you eliminate the no preference group, then for the two groups left ebooks are preferred 6.5 times more than print. Of course this isn't addressing the issues of connectivity/access and prep. I do think that ebooks as textbooks are the way to go and I do so as much as possible in my own classes. But, many schools will subscribe to an etextbook service only to find out that the interactions and video are great, but when all the students try to access there isn't enough bandwidth to access, or they don't have enough computers or wireless connections. I think that it is great that administration/schools are looking to ebooks as a classroom/learning tool, I do feel that the interactions and accommodations in ebooks will help many students in their learning. I know that with one school that I was consulting with, when working with their IT support staff we found that their wireless network was very limited and that there wasn't even enough space for all the teachers to go wireless at their school. So while many do look to interactive tablets as their ebook tool, it may be better to go with eink devices that don't use up so much bandwith or wireless accounts.
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