eBook News

My mom, my brother and me living in Pisa. A recent LA Times article (see link and more at bottom of post) writes about how ebook had help increase Spanish-language literature reading. Am I am sure that it did just that. One issue that I always had was finding books for my students to read in their own native language, this was something close to me as I experiences a similar loss in my youth. As an elementary student I started school in Italy, and while I went to school on a military base, we didn't live on base but instead in the local community. Even when I went on base the reading materials were not focused to my reading levels (although there were books available from our school library), but when not in session, we didn't have access to the school library. As such there were not many children's books available. One good thing then was that it did help make be learn to also read in Italian, but on the other hand for English there just wasn't much there. Then on...

I realize how adaptable tablets and computers are and how much that they can do, but there are still reasons to use an eink device with your schools and textbooks. One big reason in the classroom would be battery life, that month on a charge ensures that the device will be working and then also if a students does stop it won't be all of them. For tablets, my worry about power would be for the teacher at the end of the day, if the students have been movie watching during lunch it could be quite possible for a good number of them to be it of charge by the end of the day. Then there is reading itself. There have been studies that have shown that reading with eink shows the same effects in the brain as reading from paper, but tablets are different, not necessarily bad, just different. Then too, that power issue come up again for extended reading, think an hour at a time. We want students to get into flow and close reading, and eink devices are good for that. Eink devices like the kindl...

The other day I was going to my online Kindle account with amazon, to use my kindle cloud reader and I thought that instead of going to Amazon, then choosing the Manage my Kindle option and select my book, I would just type in what I thought was address, I should have typed read.amazon.com, but instead I typed kindle.amazon.com and got something that I hadn't expected. I also found a big bonus for anyone who is currently getting their textbooks (hopefully for free) through Amazon. A magic place where all your notes and highlights reside, just waiting for you to use. So as you are reading your etextbook, just continue to make appropriate highlights and notes (see Ebooks as Textbooks Part 2 and Part 6). The difference here is that we will be accessing the notes from an online tool, versus the My Clippings file. Next, when you want to review your notes, log into your personal Amazon Kindle Page at http://kindle.amazon.com . This part of Amazon has a list of all your syncable boo...

I've always surprised about how it is so difficult to get starting integrating ebooks in schools or just to convince so many in the public to make to try reading from ebook devices. I've been working with ebooks for about 20 years, and I can remember when I attended the first International Etext Conference back in 1998, how I thought that in just a couple of years we will have ebook devices in the hands of the students. I'm constantly surprised at how long it has taken to get as far to where we are today, although I now know that a basic premise technology integration always takes longer than expected, and we were developing new and better tools all along. I see the integration issue though as one related to "shifting baseline". With shifting baseline people identify something as normal or standard based on what was true when they gained awareness. Shifting baseline was first discussed in terms of fishing catches, people only though about their catch compared...

Alice in Wonderland being read on a Kindle Paperwhite (original by George Dunlop Leslie - English, 1834-1921) The Chemist in his Laboratory (Un Chimiste dans son laboratoire) dit Le Souffleur with a jetbook Pierre Auguste Renoir,  Portrait of Jean and Genevieve Caillebotte reading on a OLPC XO  tablet

You go to school, you have classes and in those classes you will have others students, a teacher and and a textbook. That textbook, will usually selected by the school district for you use use (usually from a big publishing house), and will usually be a big book weighing quite a few pounds. That is the classic thought about textbooks, although they don't have to be like that.  don't have to be limited to a course, although if you are a teacher reading this you might now be thinking of building your own etextbook. A textbook , as defined by Google, is "a book used as a standard work for the study of a particular subject" (google 2013) and from that people usually think school. You can expand that definition to read that a textbook is that it is a book that you use to learn facts, strategies, and methods about a topic. So while you might create your own text book for a class,  think about how a repair guide or manual is actually a form of textbook to learn about a car, ...

“A textbook can do much more than be on the one hand a mere statement of the results of reasoning such as the ordinary geography or German grammar is, or on the other hand a mere statement of problems, such as the ordinary arithmetic or German reader is” (Thorndike, 1912, 165-166)   Historically textbooks have been fixtures in education. Stein, Stuen, Carnine, and Long estimate that "textbooks serve as the basis for 75 to 90 percent of classroom instruction" (2001, p. 6). This is understandable in the times before the information as often the textbook was the only resource, outside the teacher that delivered content, as content area information was so scarce. Still today f or many courses, textbooks are a default part of the curriculum's instruction often provide the facts learned in most subjects. For many students, textbooks are sometimes only content area reading, leading many to think of them as the authoritative tool, a font of accurate information and necess...