eBook News

This is the start of a short series on using ebooks and ebook readers as textbooks. Reading Aloud - using Text-to-Speech with your ebook.  Ebooks seem to be the new wave for textbooks. Already ebooks and book rentals have had a major impact on book sales at the college level and a number of states have already passed legislation or are working on legislation concerning changing the school textbook to be either more or fully digital. In my own state of Florida we already have legislation that will require schools to begin changing to digital textbooks by the 2015-2016 school year. Of course one of the driving pressures for this change is money, ad the US DOE expects that this kind of change could save approximately $60 per student per year - something that could be a nice summative savings (especially when you consider that my district has about 200,000 students = a savings of $12,000,000 from the yearly budget). And while this is all fine and good ...

Today I was doing a presentation on Mapping Shakespeare for the Florida Virtual School. The whole design of their virtual conference for students was very interesting, but it got me to thinking about the books that the students were reading. On my own campus I have seen students walking around with books such as the collected works of Shakespeare. When I have been able to talk to them, I ask if they were using extra material in the text, like summaries or expert commentaries. So far every time the answer has been "no". In investigating the cost of such a book, I have often found it approaching the $100 mark. While I understand many students who have to get that book, looking for a version they can sell back, unless they plan to be Shakespeare scholars, but I don't understand why they ever buy it. I know that instructors are often unaware of digital options for text, and that students are usually more aware. But with the current cost of books in college averaging ab...