eBook News

Back in 1997 Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle (in the style of R.A. Heinlein) wrote a "juvenile" science fiction series with the central characters being young adults. These books used real science as did the R.A. Heinlein ones. In one of the books, Higher Education, a large part of the focus on the education system. As part of that story the students in school didn't read their books, instead, they watched videos and had electronic readers read the books aloud to them. So it looks like to some extent we are now approaching that science fiction waypoint, as now less than half prefer to read a textbook versus watching a video of the content. This could also mean that we need to work harder to make the books more enjoyable and understandable. I can say that as a science teacher, especially when teaching in middle school, I and my students would become frustrated with our textbooks, as most science textbooks were written two grade levels above the grade that they were