eBook News

If you are planning your next semester for your students, you might want to consider using some open source textbooks for them to use instead of purchasing or renting. I know that my students have commented on their appreciation of me providing them a free open source text over them having to purchase an additional book. I believe that the numbers that I read before were along the line of undergraduates having an ongoing credit card debt of over $5K, and graduate students of over $8K, a good portion of which was attributed to extra costs at college/university of which a big part was textbooks. I know that the college board estimates that the average student spends about $1200 on books and supplies and that a single book can cost as much as $200. I read that according to National Association of College Stores, the average price of a new textbook increased from $57 in 2007 to $65 in 2010 and to $79 in 2013, which would include some pretty low cost required reading like paperback novels,

Perhaps it is familiarity breeds contempt, or maybe it is just familiarity breeds a giving break. Either way, we do know that students will work harder on their writing when they know that what they are writing is going to be read by more than just their teacher, their parent, or the student next to them. So as the school year is ending and you are thinking about what to do next year, think about having your students produce and publish their work and put it out to the world. Below are two articles about how teachers have gotten their students to activity publish their work either as books or magazines. If you want to try some book publishing yourself (or with your students), you might want to start with a tool like StoryBird (https://storybird.com/), there you can write your story, then have it published into their digital library, and if you really want to you can even buy a printed (soft- or hard-cover) copy of the book for your shelves - or the school library's collection.