eBook News

The ongoing adaptation of art which "used" to include books and now will have ebook devices. Perhaps not classic art, but changing a magazine ad from the early 1920s to include ebooks as gifts. This picture didn't actually have books in it, but the packages that were on the chair reminded me of the boxes my ebooks came in.  And of course not only people interact with books, pets to too. Frank Paton's 1880 painting Tearaway with an iPad showing a textbook.  John Henry Dolph's 1881 painting The Scholar on a Kobo

One of the things that I do love about my ebook devices, is their ability to carry so many books. Before during a holiday or work trip, I would be packing a number of books that I then had to cart around throughout the trip. Now instead, I just load up my Kindle, then turn on the Airline mode and I'm set till I get back home with plenty to read, and I'm usually able to make the whole trip on one charge. I often like to add books about where I'm going, along with other information. During my last trip I was in China, and I not only had my collection to read on the way there and back, I also (like a lot of others I saw) had something to read on the subway. As an extra I had downloaded the Beijing subway map as a PDF to my Kindle, and so I always had a map with me, that won't add more things that I have to carry.  So for those of you about to go on holiday break (winter in the northern hemisphere or summer in the southern), don't forget to load up your device for t...

A couple of weeks ago I had "purchased" a Dr. Who comic book from Amazon (purchased, but free then).  And as I was trying out such a book on my Kindle to see how well it works (and it did work fine, although the zooming took a bit of practice). It made me think of a few things, first was that the comic book was based on the last three Doctors versus the "older" Doctors. I had watched one of the older shows from the 1960's just recently with Tom Baker and do enjoy the new ones Saturdays on BBC America. While thinking of the two and the involved plot points in the modern show reminded me of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. And I think that this show is another good example that the premise of that book is true. Things today are more complicated that those from that "Golden Age" of television. I think that Dr. Who is an excellent resource for comparison as it is a show ...

It's been a while, but today I felt like adapting some more classic art to include ereaders.  Reading Little Women from her iPad, This is Our Corner by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Dutch-English, 1836-1912) Reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears with her Nexus, Seymour Joseph Guy's   The Story of Golden Locks (American, 1824-1910)

Just heard from one of my publishers that my Ebooks for Elementary School books will be out soon. It is a combination reference, tutorial, and strategy guide will help all teachers and school librarians to effectively use the reading applications described, regardless of the classroom computing platform. eBooks offer students as well as teachers, school and public librarians, and parents tremendous possibilities. This book explains how to expand and enhance the reading experience through the use of technology. Today, eBooks are everywhere, and the use of digital learning materials is beginning to supplant traditional printed materials. As the world shifts to digital books, both teachers and students need to be comfortable and effective using materials in this format. This book helps you to apply eBook materials to existing curricula to create interactive educational activities and have access to more materials to support reading instruction, literacy, standards, and reading in the co...

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...

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...

Hacking is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things usually concerning computers or technology somehow. And while many think about hacking as breaking into secure computer networks, it can also be referring to modifying your own software or hardware on a computer system or even furniture (such as  Ikea hacks ). So hacking can include building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating software, electronic hardware, modding, or anything else, either to make it better or faster or to give it added features or to make it do something it wasn't initially intended to do. Hacking your textbook is to hack and adapt your textbook for greater personal efficiency, so that you can be great work easier.  So if you have full access to your textbook, not just for reading, but access enough that you can make changes, then it's time to start hacking your textbook. If you are using something like an open access textbook, that just makes this so much...

The process of taking notes, makes reading that much more of an active process and will aid in comprehension and retention. The addition of your own personal notes are usually easier to understand and remember than textbook material. As a student reads the textbook, he or she may not remember all of that they read when they have finished - this is especially true of very dense texts. But, if a student reads the information and also writes down notes about what he or she is reading at the same time, then that extra step reinforces that information and improves retention. So one of the best ways to retain information you are reading it is to take notes while you are actually reading it, for print books these notes were usually written in the margins of the text and so were called margin notes.  The taking of margin notes is a strategy that focuses your attention on important information from the textbook, novels, or articles that you are reading. Because it involves ...